


we owe nothing now

by ur_the_puppy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Clexa Week 2019, Day 7, F/F, Free day, Minor Character Death, its a zombie apoc au people gone die, reincarnation a littttle bit if you squint, sorta soulmate au, this is more an excuse for me to be bitter about the absolute bullshit that is lexas death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 15:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17983388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ur_the_puppy/pseuds/ur_the_puppy
Summary: For as long as Clarke could remember, every year on the third of March, her soul would die.





	we owe nothing now

**Author's Note:**

> some bits might have a fuck tonne of mistakes and typos cause my organisational skills are atrocious and i had to rush some parts to get it done on time. would also like to say up front there's pretty much no clexa in this first part, but the next part will be like all clexa and nothing else. you can assume this is less a fic and more a bitter rambling and me killing titus for catharsis. 
> 
> ALSO full disclosure: while I've always had a weak spot for mum!clarke it’s not enough to convince me to watch the 100 past Lexa’s death. I stopped at the s3 finale and havnet touched it since. So madi is probably going to be wildly out of character to what she is in the show. If youre real particular about characterisation like that, then reading this will probably only piss you off. I'm not going to be apologising for how shes acts in this bc its fanfic and you absolutely bet this shit will be self-indulgent to the core.

**I**

 

For as long as Clarke could remember, every year on the third of March, her soul would die.

Or at least, that was the closest she could come to describing the feeling. It had been with her since the day she’d first opened her eyes and never left. She’d been dragged to countless therapists and psychiatrists over it, she’d even had doctors and brain scans and everything.

Nothing explained it. She never really had hope something would. She had resigned herself to it now; she put a reminder for the date on her phone and pencilled it on her calendar, made sure that that day was always left empty of plans.

Once she’d been curious and frustrated and wanted to know, wanted to know _why_ it felt like her soul was dying over and over but only for that day, for that time. How she was always at the verge of tears from midnight to till the next and sobs broke out frequent and ragged and reducing her throat to what felt like bloody tatters. And how for whatever reason, she simply _couldn’t_ be anywhere near her bed. The moment she woke up and it was that day she ripped herself out and she didn’t touch it until her soul wasn’t so bleeding anymore and finally, she’d be able to tiredly crawl back in.

The worst thing was her heart. Her soul might be dying, but her heart wasn’t something so lucky. It lived on and it pumped and it pushed, but it felt _wrong_ , it felt empty and it only spurred this overwhelming tide of bitterness and hate. How dare it keep going, how _dare_ it keep breathing when her very soul was screaming and thrashing and tearing into pathetic irrevocable shreds while it watched without doing a damn thing.

Her heart sometimes _ached_ so bad she knew it would hurt far less if she could just rip it out and stab it to the ground. But she never could, because Clarke also knew so surely that that would be a far worse betrayal. Of what, she had no absolutely no idea. She never knew the cause. Only felt the consequence.

But she knew that her soul would die and her heart would beat and there wasn’t nothing that could change that.

And when she woke up to the deafening screams of outside and a nationwide announcement that world was ended flashing red on her TV, a plead and a prayer that may whatever divine grace take mercy on them, Clarke knew that there wasn’t nothing that could change that either.

She only packed a bag of essentials, got on her motorbike, and didn’t look back.

-

She had always been the loner type, but somehow Clarke found herself being dragged into two different groups until she finally grew sane again. People tended to die quick around her. It wasn’t a case of blame though, Clarke knew it wasn’t _actually_ her individual fault that people she loved died. There was only one person who Clarke would know her entire life and they’d never die until she did, and that was herself, but the more you loved the more you had to lose, and it was _that_ she knew and stuck to as an internal code.

The first group was accidental. When the news came of actual, not-fucking-around _zombies_ infecting the streets, flesh-eating monsters that didn’t care for nothing about you but the pulse in your neck, Clarke knew she was best alone and that was that. She got out of her shitty apartment quick and the city even quicker. Briefly took part in the ransacking of a supermarket down the street, broke someone’s nose when they tried to steal her backpack when she wasn’t looking and almost got _her_ nose broken in retaliation.

But then one of those monsters came in, with dead eyes and dead skin and _starving_ —and unlike Clare they weren’t the loner types. One came and then two and then three and Clarke snatched her backpack and hauled the fuck out.

And she would’ve made it fine out too, except as she was running she heard a scream and then a gunshot.

A _gunshot_.

Clarke hated the sound more than anything. She hated it more than that asshole in the seventh grade and she hated it more than the unshakable rift that’d spawned between her and her mother when her father died. She _hated_ it. It made her jaw clench and her eyes burn and her soul—her goddamn soul—freeze and choke and _bleed_.

So she tripped and fell, white-hot pain jolted through her chin and arms in the crash to the ground. She cursed, spitting and scrambling to get back up, but it was too late and suddenly one of those _things_ was snarling and lunging for her.

There was a moment where she thought she was going to die. But from nowhere the monster was suddenly dropping dead—well, dead _again_ —to the floor when a man smashed its head in with a fire extinguisher from behind.

Clarke had just stared wide-eyed from where she was still on the ground, glancing between the thing and to her apparent saviour.

“Are you okay?” the man asked, his breathing still fast and panicked. Clarke could only stare and while he might have just quite literally killed someone in front of her, his hands were trembling and his eyes and voice were sincere and concerned. Definitely not the sort who should be sharing her company, that’s for sure.

But the world was dying and while Clarke had been alone most of her life, two heads meant someone to watch your back. Surely she’d survive longer than way.

“I’m fine,” Clarke said, and quickly got herself up to her feet. She grabbed her bag, threw it over her back and bit her lip. She caved with a sigh. “You need a ride out?”

The man blinked, but when the cacophony of yells and screams got louder he nodded quickly. “Yeah but, I need to get my friend first—”

Clarke immediately stepped back. “No. I’m leaving now and if you’re sane you’ll do the same and never look back. You saved my life, so I can get you out of here. My bike can barely fit two as it is.”

His mouth opened and closed. He glanced behind him, and when he looked back at her she thought that she saw his soul die too.

“You’re wrong,” he said, and he grit his teeth, defiant and sure. “I’m going to come back.”

But still he went with her, because he knew that to come back he needed to survive.

He sat behind her as they rode out of the dying city, gripping so tightly around Clarke’s stomach she almost couldn’t breathe. She only focused on what was ahead, she took all the shortcuts and side streets she knew and never glanced behind, even if she could feel and sense that was all the man was doing. His eyes only ever watched behind, and Clarke thought him a fool but so was she for bringing him.

Later she learnt his name was Wells.

-

She got along with Wells a lot more than she thought she would.

At first it was only them and later on Clarke would look back on those memories of watching over each other’s shoulders and Wells’ seemingly never ending source of trivia facts and his supernatural ability to _annihilate_ her at chess—they found the set in an abandoned caravan park with the undead only lingering on the outskirts, easy to sneak by—with a fondness she didn’t think herself capable of.

She still stood behind her rule to keep distant and untethered, but her resolve wasn’t quite as thick after spending weeks with someone who treated love like it wasn’t something so feeble. When Wells stumbled upon a lanky, thin-faced woman alone and trapped with undead clawing at her house door, he somehow roped Clarke into a rescue mission and now her company of one was of two.

They freed her and escaped by the skin of their teeth, and when she asked for their names Wells gave it and Clarke said nothing. She didn’t want another mouth to feed and tend to but Wells was Wells, he had this stupid damn heart that Clarke knew so surely would kill him if he didn’t learn to wrangle it.

Wells never did. They expanded for two to three to four up to their peak at seven, an entire damn _group_ that Clarke wanted absolutely no part in.

But Wells had stood by her for these three months, as if he’d known her since they were children and the only thing that separated them as family was blood. So Clarke stayed, and she helped, because she might prefer the company of stars to people but Wells had given the group her name and Clarke didn’t take that a light trust.

And for a while, Clarke almost thought she wasn’t a fool for doing so.

-

Wells went back.

Clarke told him he would be insane to do so. He told her of his decision on watch duty in the old farm they had all settled into. They’d lost a few of their own and assimilated new ones into the group in their place. They had been making pitiful attempts of a home here for about a month now. Well, Clarke thought it pitiful. Wells said it wasn’t, and that while home could be lost so easily could it be remade. Clarke laughed and shook her head and said there weren’t no such thing as home anyway, so why bother the foolish attempt of one?

“What do you mean?” he had asked, and she could just make out his furrowed brow even if the sliver of the moon was the only source of the light.

Clarke only smiled and it was so heavy even gravity had a hard time facing against it. “Home isn’t a place, it’s where your soul lives,” she’d muttered, and soon she was tearing her eyes off him and looking out into the swaying trees. “Your soul dies with your home.”

Wells laughed a bit then, not malicious at all but in disbelief and curiosity like it always was when they got into their debates. Her and Wells were similar in some ways, hence they got on quick, but Wells was always far more enticed with opposing views and trails of thought he’d never walked down. “Yeah?” he pushed, a curious grin on his lips. “So where does your soul live?”

Clarke didn’t say anything. Wells waited a moment and at the continuing silence, he nodded like she’d answered anyway.

“Maybe you’re a little right.” He eventually went on. Clarke glanced at him. “Home is a feeling, isn’t it? I guess something like that is too big to be tied to a single place alone.”

She let the silence stretch. Clarke watched the meadows. They had managed to snag a vet a few weeks back, and lucky enough too, as when they’d come here there were only a couple cows left and they looked almost as dead as the world around them. They were fine enough now, and it was a calming thing to watch the cows graze the grass lazily in the dark.

“I’m going back.”

Clarke swallowed. “You’ll die.”

Wells rolled his eyes. “I’ve made it just fine, Clarke, I’m—”

“You’ve made it because you’ve been _smart_.” She snapped, and she knew she had fucked up long before the moment came, because she should have been indifferent but instead she was desperate. “But going back there where it’s crawling with undead is the opposite end of the fucking scale and you know it.”

“I told you I was going to go back.” He reminded, narrowing his eyes, and some of that defiance right back from months ago came back again. “I’m sorry, Clarke. But I have to know. We’re safe here now. You might not think it but we’ve got the starting of a home here, I know we do. Margret says we might even be able to think about settling permanently here.”

Clarke clenched her jaw and hated the burning behind her eyes. “You’ll die,” she tried one last time, but Wells smiled at her and shook his head like they were arguing about the better cereal brand and not his goddamn life.

“I’ll be fine, Clarke. I have to do this. I’ll back in a few days. I promise.” She glanced away, but her eyes came back at his soft chuckle. “You know, for someone so cynical and cold all the time, I think you’re actually a secret softie at heart.”

Clarke didn’t tell him he was wrong. She only stared at him and wondered how she’d been foolish enough to go and find someone to care about. She wasn’t soft at heart. Her heart was a traitor and always had been. It was a stupid, stupid thing and its worst pain was its ability to carry on. There was nothing soft there; it was just a cavern so deep you couldn’t make out the bottom.

The second something falls in, its doomed to stay. Even if all it becomes at the bottom is a grave of everything lost.

-

Wells left in the morning and he never came back.

Clarke wished she had told him the truth. That she had answered, when he had asked where her soul lived. Because she knew damn well where it did. She wished she had told him about the third of March and that it was that day alone that let her know with absolute clarity she had no home.

Her home died every year on the third.

-

The farm got overrun barely a few weeks later. Not by the undead though, far, far worse monsters that cared for more than the pulse in your neck. Another group came, but this was one had all of them decked out in clips and chains of bullets with rifles in their hands, a burning hunger in their eyes that had been seen in every war ever had, and Clarke took one look at them and knew if she didn’t run she was dead.

But Wells, stupid, _stupid_ fucking Wells had called this pathetic scrap of a place home. And Clarke knew so intimately of what it meant to lose home, and it didn’t matter none that Wells was dead—she wasn’t letting his home die without a fight, and that was that.

Clarke was alone and Wells was dead and this time when she raised the gun in her hand and fired, she didn’t flinch.

It was chaos. Everyone was screaming and the air was overridden with bullet cracks again and again, demolishing through the log walls like they were nothing and repeatedly slamming into their vet’s, Charlie, body so fast that by the time he hit the floorboards he was already long dead.

His wife _screamed_ and Clarke didn’t understand how it felt familiar. She was hiding behind a turned over table shoving in another clip into her pistol, but when she watched his wife scramble and sink to her knees by his corpse, sobbing and wailing and uselessly trying to stop him bleeding, Clarke felt her own eyes sting and her soul ache like it _knew_.

She killed the invaders. Clarke had never really thought herself the type to be able to do such a thing. But somewhere amidst the chaos, where at some point they threw a Molotov through the window and the house erupted into choking flames that sent them running—Clarke found herself snapping orders, wrangling Wells’ people as if it was second nature.

They listened to her, though she had no idea why. They lost almost all of them but they defeated the group who’d tried to take them. In the aftermath where Clarke could taste the ash and smoke in her mouth and burning in her nose, she walked by the bodies; she took their weapons and their supplies and wondered at just what line do you draw the definition of monster.

It was only three of them that made it out. They looked at Clarke and asked what the hell they were meant to do now.

“Go north,” Clarke said, ignoring the spit and hissing she could hear as Wells’ home burned and died to join him. She sat herself on her bike and revved the engine. “Stick together. Watch your backs. When one is asleep, one of you is awake. Don’t settle for long and don’t make noise. You keep to your own and stay alone and you’ll survive.”

The two of them frowned at her, but when one of them opened their mouths to no doubt ask why she wasn’t going with them, Clarke turned away and the bike snarled before she left them standing there in the dust.

She drove and drove and she only looked back once.

Because Wells always had, and she owed him that at least.

-

She found Madi when it had almost been two years later.

Madi was a kid that refused to be called a kid. She actually bit Clarke the first time she’d met her, when Clarke had unknowingly wandered into the house she’d set up camp in in an attempt to find supplies. She had been in the midst of searching cupboard for any traces of food, as her own stash was getting dangerously low, when that little devil of a child had jumped on her back and tried to cut her throat.

But Clarke was an adult and Madi was not and so she was an easy weight to throw off. Immediately Clarke drew her gun that’d somehow become second nature to her, but then she’d raised it at her attacker to find a kid staring at her with bared teeth. She had been stunned—because did an actual goddamn _child_ seriously just try to slit her throat?—but then the kid burst forward and literally _bit_ Clarke’s hand and the shock and pain meant she dropped the gun.

Madi scrambled to grab it but Clarke had longer arms and got to it first.

It had taken a while to convince the little devil not to murder her. Clarke was absolutely certain the kid was either the descendent of a demon or straight up was one that’d been cast out of hell. She always looked at her with narrowed eyes, she didn’t trust Clarke for shit and tried to steal from her—three times, she failed every one because Clarke didn’t trust no one either—and she only ever started to ease, just the slightest, when Clarke found a chocolate bar in one raid and halved it with her.

Madi was eleven, she bit her and snapped at her, she could never be left alone for more than five minutes and had a freaky natural talent with knives. She was an absolute demon of a child.

Clarke decided quite early on she loved her.

Her heart was a traitor, but what else was new?

-

Wells would have liked Madi. She was good at chess too.

-

Her phone died long ago, but Clarke didn’t need it to know it was nearly here.

She knew March as the start to the lazy crawl into spring. The season dragged itself on its hands and knees with empty trees suddenly becoming less lonely and flowers spanning out like they were trying to reach up and touch the yawning sun. Clarke felt it all like storm clouds looming, and she sat on her sleeping bag out in the middle of fuck knows where, only the woods around them and a dying fire, staring and staring at her wristwatch.

Madi was knocked out cold beside her. The kid could sleep on anything as long as the surface was vaguely horizontal. She was a little jealous of her, but Madi was also about to hit puberty in the middle of the apocalypse. Clarke could think of few worse nightmares.

The hand inched past twelve. Clarke released a trembling breath and closed her eyes, and like always the pain swept over her like being slammed into by a merciless flood; it grabbed her and it threw her and it spit on her corpse. Her body shook, a sob broke out and it _hurt_. It fucking hurt. Her soul kept dying a thousands deaths while her heart still lived and breathed like the traitor it was.

Madi woke up. She rubbed her eyes and yawned, and she sleepily glanced up at Clarke to find her _crying_ and for the first time Clarke managed to shock her speechless. Because Madi might maybe be related to a demon and really just a complete monster of a kid, but Clarke was a steady thing, usually. She always said no when Madi asked if she could go in first and she always ruffled Madi’s hair with her right hand but drew her gun with her left.

She didn’t cry. Clarke had spent a long, long time building those walls and it would take the worst kind of pain to break that.

And, of course, this was that type of pain.

Clarke furiously rubbed at her eyes but the pain didn’t stray. It settled and festered in a familiar pattern, that choking, all eclipsing grief constricting in her lungs till it was like barbed wire bleeding her from inside. But she jolted in surprise when she found a little brunette head lie itself in her lap.

Madi didn’t trust easy and in the back of Clarke’s mind she’d been just a bit convinced that Madi had only been trailing by her heels these past three months because it was all some elaborate plot of murder. She would wait until Clarke turned her back long enough, slit her throat, take her things, and run off.

Clarke raised a hand and let it thread tentatively through Madi’s hair.

Her soul kept dying, but her heart didn’t ache so bad.

-

The second group she was in was destroyed from within.

It started when Clarke learnt that Madi wasn’t actually alone. Well, _physically_ she had been, when Clarke had found her, but her blood ran in another’s veins and there was an invisible string that tied her to a man who was aware of that too. He wasn’t her father, Clarke learnt, he was her uncle and Madi was his estranged sister’s kid. She and her had been sitting on the floor of an abandoned bar, sharing a bottle of whiskey that Madi only had one sip of before spitting out and leaving Clarke’s stomach aching with laughter.

“Shut the hell up,” Madi snarled at her, but she was still coughing and if anything it only made Clarke laugh harder.

“I warned you,” Clarke managed to gasped out, and it earned her a glare and Madi punching her in the arm. It was only as her laughter was finally subsiding that the bar door suddenly burst open and a man came charging through.

Her laughter died in seconds and she lurched up to feet fast as a blink. She snatched the neck of Madi’s shirt and shoved her behind her, drawing her gun with the motion and aiming directly at the man’s bald head.

“Step away from the child.” The man snapped and he branded a gun too. But his was a rifle, long and terrifying and aimed dead on her head. He bared his teeth from where the gun pressed against his cheek. “I’ll fucking burn you alive for what you’ve done.”

Clarke had done many things. She didn’t know what he was referencing.

But her hand was still holding onto Madi’s shirt, and her fist curled tighter into the fabric. “You harm a hair on her head, and I will kill you, and everyone who’s had the misfortune to be loved by you.”

And she almost did, really. She didn’t recognise him but somehow she felt like she _knew_ him, and she couldn’t place for the life for her just why she wanted so bad to put a bullet in his head.

But then Madi crept out from behind her, despite Clarke trying to pull her back, and with that same defiant gaze and gritted teeth that Clarke seen when they’d first met, she raised her chin and shook her head.

“She’s not the one that took me Titus; _she’s_ the one that’s been keeping me safe. Stop pointing your gun at her.” She glared at him then, and it was the first time that Clarke believed her on how she always denied being a kid. “You’re a lousy shot, anyway.”

Titus blinked and his jaw dropped, but with his eyes flicking between Clarke and her, he eventually came to listen and he lowered the weapon.

Every fibre of her soul wanted to kill him, but Madi was looking expectantly at her as well, and so she only sighed sharply through her nose before lowering hers too. She didn’t holster it.

They went back to his people because that was what Madi agreed to and somehow Clarke cared more for the kid’s safety than her own. So she went with her, and it didn’t escape her notice how despite being Madi’s supposed uncle, she didn’t run to hug him at the reunion or go any further than a tight smile. Throughout the entire trek back to wherever his people were camped out, Madi held Clarke’s hand and always kept just a little bit behind her.

Madi had never held Clarke’s hand before.

-

Clarke hated Titus.

And it wasn’t any pathetic hate either, somehow ran even more deep and blistering as her hate for bullets. Guns still swept her with unease despite her using them every day, but being in Titus’s presence was about as enjoyable as being shot a thousand times and never dying. Just _looking_ at him always spawned thoughts in her head morbid and worrying even for her. She never left Madi alone with him, much to his displeasure, but Madi never objected and it seemed that, like her, he followed the kid’s will as well. At least in public and under Clarke’s eye.

This group was even bigger than her old one. They told her this settlement was their home. When the world was alive it had been an unimportant and pitiful little town with barely enough population to hit double digits. They called it Tondc, they thanked her for finding and looking after Madi, they remarked about the kindness of her heart and Clarke nodded without saying anything back.

They offered their names; Clarke took them and gave nothing in return.

This wasn’t home. To Clarke it looked exactly like that shitty farm years back, except this one had better fortified walls and a watch shift rotating along the perimeter. There was a makeshift garden on one side where they grew potatoes, yams and lettuce and enough greens to make any child recoil. You couldn’t hear the moans of the undead and hidden here, you could almost forget the world had died.

But it was the same car, really. Just new and better features, but in the end, exactly the same. Clarke knew it would fall and it would burn and there wasn’t nothing no one could do to stop it. She only slept when Madi was awake, she never walked around unarmed, she didn’t talk to those that tried with her and the only thing of real importance she did was watching Titus.

She stared and stared and sometimes he stared back in the same way.

Every night Clarke dreamt of hands soaked in black blood, of her soul dying but this was _different_ ; this was too fresh and raw and agony right down in its purest, cruellest form. Every day she woke up panting and sweating, irrationally checking her hands and always flooding in relief at seeing them clean.

She wondered if Titus had the same dream, but that didn’t make sense.

-

It was one in the morning with her and Madi sitting out beneath the stars when she asked it.

Even in night the air was still warm and Clarke dreaded the summer coming round the corner. The mere thought of all those living corpses, with their festering and decaying dead flesh blistering under the boiling sun was enough to make her feel sick. The starvation should ease up though, and she supposed you had to take what you could get in the apocalypse.

“Why do you hate him?” Madi asked her, her voice low and serious. They were sitting in the garden. Clarke ran her fingers through the dirt, glanced up at the swelling moon and sighed deep. “And don’t fuck around this time. None of that evasive shit.”

Clarke’s lips tugged into a smile as she continued staring up. She leant back onto palms pressed into the cool dirt. “I know you didn’t learn language like that from me.”

She felt Madi glare at her, even if Clarke didn’t need to glance at her to know. “You swear like that all the time, Clarke. Like. The other day, you legit said, ‘I hate this fucking sun.’ What are you talking about?”

She shrugged. “I get a free pass. I’m an adult.”

“You do not.”

“I do.”

Madi flicked some dirt on her. They fell back into silence.

“So?” She spoke up again, minutes or hours later. “Why do you hate him?”

Clarke watched the stars.

“Hey. Clarke. _Clarke_.”

When words weren’t working she grabbed her arm and shook her. It finally proved enough, because soon Clarke was frowning and swatting her off. Madi just raised a brow at her, and she realised that she really wouldn’t be able to put it off any longer.

She watched Madi for another moment before she looked up at the stars again. She didn’t understand why it always felt like staring at the remains of a childhood home. “Do you remember the third of March?” she murmured, but even the quiet wasn’t enough to hide the tremor in her voice. Madi frowned. “You crawled into my lap.”

Understanding dawned over her. “You cried,” she whispered, because it seemed even she knew the significance of such a thing. “What does Titus have to do with it?”

“Do you believe in souls?”

Clarke glanced at her to see her shrug and pick at a peeking root in the dirt. Vera would definitely be killing them in the morning for messing with her garden. The woman treated this patch of planted earth with the reverence of a priest kneeling in their temple.

It felt like deliberately shoving a hot blade into her ribs when she talked about the third of March. She told Madi how her soul would always die, but only for just that day. How holding a gun was like holding a searing hot coal, and that when she looked at Titus her soul recognised him and her mind didn’t, and that more than anything she wanted him dead.

Madi nodded like she understood but Clarke knew she didn’t. She asked if Clarke knew why, and she answered with that same heavy smile and shook her head. The only thing she knew was that her soul would die once a year, there was nothing that could be done to stop it, and the cause would always remain something just that inch out of reach. She would never know it.

And she told her, quieter then, that she thought that maybe it would be worse if she did.

-

It was politics that killed them. Clarke wondered if anything really changed.

She might be silent and withdrawn, but she wasn’t no fool. And she might have spent the majority of her few months here watching Titus, but she also watched the people. Titus wasn’t the leader of these people; he was the advisor. His opinion mattered and it was valued but just as easy was it accepted, so easy was it discarded.

Most of the decisions here were made by a man called Roan. He was a practical man, and Clarke could respect that. She would never trust Madi alone with him but when he greeted her, back when she first came and everyone was still disbelieving that the kid who’d been taken months ago, that she was _alive_ and returned; Roan didn’t offer thanks but eyed her with a severe analysing gaze.

“Who told you of us?” he asked, his voice sharp and nothing like gratitude.

Clarke actually found it more what she wanted to hear. She relaxed, almost, even if her guard was still thick enough you couldn’t shoot a heavy-duty sniper round through it. “I didn’t know you existed.” She answered slowly.

He had narrowed his eyes, but after watching her for another few suffocating seconds he eventually stepped back, his chin raising and nodding at her. “What’s your name?”

“Not yours to know. I’m only here for the kid. I’ve got no intention to get involved in whatever you seem to have running here. I stay out of your way and you stay from mine.”

Roan blinked, but soon he offered her a sharp sort of smile, and in the strangest way it felt like Roan was actually approving of her. “Then I shall leave you be.”

She kept by her word and Roan kept by his. Because of that, when she started to noticing Ontari’s comments, a woman forgotten at first but then gaining a slow build of public support, how the sands started to shift and it was less Roan’s final decision that was settled on but the compromise by the two of them—Clarke learnt to watch her too, and to mention anything of note to Roan. She had no intention of picking sides in a fight not her own. But Roan kept his word, and in a world as dead as this, that meant a hell of a lot more than it used to.

Clarke knew it would snap one day. They were two rulers trying to control one kingdom. It’d be a messy, bloody thing when it came to heads, and so when it did, Clarke wasn’t so surprised as she was resigned.

She woke up to the sound of screams outside. There was merciless rain pummelling the window, of the old shack she had set up living in. She’d been offered to make home with the majority of where the people did, in the camp of tents and shitty bastardised houses further in the settlement, but Clarke wanted no home here and felt as much tether to this land as she felt to a single spec of sand on a nameless beach.

She kept to her own and alone—spare for Madi, who had apparently decided shacking up in something that barely offered room to spread your arms out was sufficient standards for her—and so when it all inevitably went to shit, they were lucky enough to not be dead centre of the conflict.

“Get up, we’ve got to go,” she snapped at Madi, but when Clarke ripped herself off the half dead mattress and started shoving any essentials into her bag, she glanced behind her while hurriedly zipping her backpack to find that damn kid still asleep. “ _Madi_.” Clarke stressed, but Madi only groaned and rolled onto her front. She shoved her pillow over her head.

“Five more minutes,” she grumbled, voice muffled and sleep riddled.

Clarke was only just now realising how often her mother probably felt justifiable homicidal rage at raising her. And she knew that she’d been an absolute monster of a kid too.

She was about to move over to her and quite literally just _pull_ her out of bed with her hands, but the sounds of gunshots going off made her freeze. Madi— _finally_ —realised that something was very, very wrong and jolted awake.

“What the hell was that?” Madi hissed, scrambling up off the mattress and forcibly blinking the sleep out of her eyes.

Clarke crouched. She ran her hands over the floorboards until she found the one she wanted. “Best guess? Civil war. Mutiny. Riot. Excreta.” Her hand stilled over the loose board. She dug her fingers in the gap she’d deliberately left at the sides, ripped it off with a grunt. “Whatever word you want to use, you need to pack your shit _now_.”

“We’re not going to help?”

Clarke stilled. She blinked, slowly, glanced up at her. “You want to stay?”

Madi’s mouth opened then closed. She frowned, but before she could try say anything more the door to their shack slammed open. Clarke immediately jumped to her feet and drew her gun, and she felt at least just a bit of relief as she sensed Madi instantly move so she was behind her.

The man was soaked head to toe, but he only spat out the rainwater still dripping onto his mouth and grinned at her, that same old sharp grin that felt like the closest thing to if a snake could smile.

Her arm didn’t lower. “Roan.” She acknowledged cautiously.

Roan used his hand to push away the wet hair still stuck on his face. He opened his mouth, but after a pause he laughed and shook his head. “You really must tell me your name, sometime. This feels entirely unfair.”

“What the hell’s going on, Roan?” Clarke snapped, raising the gun higher. Her brow creased. “Has Ontari finally made her move?”

Roan’s grin widened. “You always were more smart then you let on.” Clarke glared at him, but when another round of gunshots went off from behind followed by a bellowing, rumble of a thunder, the usually ever-present smirk actually left his face. “Ontari has blocked off the gates. You’re not getting out of here. Well, not with the kid at least. _You_ could probably climb it without getting shot, but _both_ of you…”

“You threatening me, Roan?” Clarke muttered, and while she hadn’t ever _liked_ him she never thought there’d come a time where she would have to kill him.

Roan had the nerve to laugh at her. “So defensive, Nameless. It’s like you barely trust your lungs to breathe.” He smirked at her then, and she was halfway through wondering if she really should just damn it all when he reached into his drenched jacket pocket and threw something at her.

Clarke caught it more out of reflex then anything. Her first thought was to drop it in case it was dangerous, but she paused, frowned, opening her fist up to find a cold and wet key sitting in her palm. Her eyes flicked back up to meet his.

“I can’t give you long,” he murmured, not looking at her as he reached for a revolver at his side. He checked the chamber. “I’m already pushing it now. In the bar, the one across from Vera’s garden, if you go in and into the storeroom there’s a rocking chair on a red rug.” Clarke slowly lowered her gun. “Move it and below is a hatch door. It leads into a tunnel that runs a little ways out. Certainly far enough to escape the gates, at least. You’ll want to be quick, I’ll try warn my own not to confuse you for Ontari’s side but, well, you know how mobs can be.”

Clarke stared at him, narrowing her eyes, but it was a slow realisation at confronting that he wasn’t, in fact, fucking with her. He flicked some of his soaked hair again, frowning at the streaks that kept getting near his eye.

“Roan…” she said slowly, glancing behind her at Madi, tilting in her head at her bag. Madi at least seemed to get the message. She still looked like she was standing on the precipice of something, but she listened and hurriedly went on to pack her things. Clarke looked back to him. “Why are you doing this?”

“Simple,” Roan grinned, and suddenly she was overcome with the urge to raise her gun at him again. “You strike me the type to survive, and I’d like to have a friend on the outside once this is over.”

Clarke stepped back. She knelt down again and reached for the ammunition she’d been keeping hidden under the floorboards, packing it into her backpack. She never trusted it wouldn’t get stolen if she left it out of the open. “You’re not doing me a favour and we’re not friends, Roan.” She stood up, glaring at him as she did. Roan only smirked.

“Of course.” When her glare only became more burning, dipping into something even those who didn’t fear death would hesitate at, Roan rolled his eyes and sighed. “You warned me about Ontari. I assume it’s only fair to do the same.”

Clarke didn’t offer gratitude, but her shoulders relaxed, if only by a fraction.

There was a burst yells from deeper in the settlement. Roan glanced behind him, and when he looked back Clarke knew this would be the last time she’d ever see him. And that was assuming he even survived whatever chaos to follow.

Madi seemed to be on a similar train of thought, because she moved closer, though she was at least of enough mind to still stay within arms range of Clarke. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked, and it was honestly a little unsettling when Clarke saw him actually _soften_ by a degree. Certainly against the laws of nature.

Roan’s smile crept on slow. “Of course, kid. My people outweigh hers. And, well, I’m a far better shot than her.”

Madi looked relieved at that, and Clarke for the first time was saddled with this anxious hesitation. It had always been in her nature to survive, but she hadn’t really considered if _Madi_ saw this place as home. It was an awfully clarifying moment where Clarke realised that, maybe, she would have to leave her.

There was no time though. Clarke shook the thoughts off and gave Roan one last passing glance before she moved forward. She threw her bag onto her back and Roan’s face hardened as he understood, he stepped back out of the doorway of that shitty shack and let her pass. Madi came out behind her, seemingly tethered to her heels, but just as Clarke was about to cross out to where the bar was for their escape, Roan grabbed her arm.

She hadn’t even been able to open her mouth to snarl before he was already talking. “For what it’s worth, Nameless, I think she’s better off with you than him.” He muttered, quiet enough only she heard. Clarke blinked, so thrown that her threat got lost to a frown. Roan smiled and anyone with half a brain wouldn’t trust it a second. “Sometimes I even wonder if she was ever ‘kidnapped’, or if she merely ran.”

And giving no time to even unpack that hell of a statement, Roan winked and stepped away. He spun around and ran into the heart of the settlement, where the yells and screams were the loudest and it was like walking into a tornado that had already destroyed half the village.

Clarke glanced down at Madi, and at her nod she looked back up and went into the chaos too.

-

They almost made it.

It wasn’t easy even before it all went wrong. The gunshots were only growing more frequent as the rest of the settlement woke up and got involved in the fight, tensions that had been seething underneath like a leviathan roaming closer and closer to the surface suddenly came breaking over with a furious roar—she saw the lines in the sand spat and bled on, barely accepting neighbours went tackling each other to the ground while gunfire and thunderclaps covered the sounds of pounding fists. The rain kept pouring and hammering and Clarke barely kept herself from slipping in the forming mud.

She only ended up having to attack one person as she grabbed Madi’s hand hard enough she was sure it hurt and ran. It was a woman already bloodied, staggering out in front of them as Clarke helped Madi through the back of house and out the way of the heart of the fight. The woman came staggering and leaning her hand against the outside cement wall of the bar, clutching her stomach and spitting blood out her mouth.

The stranger’s gaze snapped up at Clarke and Madi’s sudden appearance. Clarke’s eyes widened and she was halfway through shouting a warning to Madi and raising her gun when the woman yelled at them and _lunged_.

The space was too tight to avoid it. The woman slammed into her and the gun went tumbling from her wet hands. Clarke’s arms immediately snapped up to brace the punch the woman threw at her—she didn’t even know if she was Roan’s people or Ontari’s, though what the hell did it matter now?—but the woman was clearly injured and Clarke was not

She shoved her off. Her bag took the brunt of the force, but still it and her pants got drenched in mud and Clarke dove for her, hitting a strike to her face that sent her head snapping to the side. She straddled her to keep her on her back, but a desperate glance for her gun proved useless, and right as the woman snarled and tried to spring up Clarke’s hands shot out to her throat and she shoved her back down.

Clarke spat out the rainwater in her mouth, blinking the steady stream hitting her eyes as she grit her teeth and tightened her grip. The woman thrashed against her but she was weak, fading, and more blood only came leaking out the corner of her lips until the fingers that’d be trying to rip Clarke’s off fell limp.

She waited an extra beat before releasing her. Her breathing was still coming too hard, but still she wasted a second to press her fingers to the woman’s neck.

She was alive.

Clarke shoved herself to her feet. She snatched her gun off the ground, whipped around to find Madi and relief crashed into her at seeing with her back pressed tight to wall, small and shaking with that knife she always had in her hands.

“Come on,” Clarke panted and grabbed her jacket sleeve to pull her forward. “We’ve wasted too much time, keep moving.”

Madi looked back as if to say something but Clarke kept pushing her forwards. She peeked a glance out the alleyway before whispering at Madi to go and prodded her again, constantly looking over her shoulder at the chaos still blazing. Even if the rain was infuriating it at least meant no fires could break out, and it was the strangest relief at knowing that, at least, history wouldn’t repeat itself so completely.

She wasn’t looking when shoved open the bar door and pushed Madi in first. She was reaching into pocket and feeling for the key when she felt nothing and realised it was gone. Their one fucking ticket of escape.

Clarke hissed a curse. She’d no doubt lost it in the brawl. “Stay in the bar Madi,” she told her, already leaning in and giving a quick cursory check of the bar. No one. Safe for now. “Get behind something and away from the windows, understand?”

Madi looked confused, but she nodded and gripped tighter to her knife. “I got it.” She said, obviously trying to look the same fearless devil she’d always been.

Something spasmed in her heart and Clarke reached out to ruffle her hair even as she was already backing away. “I’ll be quick, I promise.”

She ignored the memory of the last person who said that.

The rain made it worse. She crept back into the side and crouched to one knee, frantically scanning over where the key would have gone. The woman still lay unconscious next to her and it was an effort to ignore what it meant for her—but they were out of time, she shoved down the panic trying to burst out her chest and holstered her gun so she had two hands to hurriedly flit her hands through the mud to find it.

It took too many minutes and the sounds of screaming and gunshots only got louder, but she found it buried in the wet dirt near the woman’s hand and snatched it. She was already up and running with her backpack slapping against her, grinning wide in relief, shouldering the bar door open without pause and calling out for Madi as she burst in.

She stopped dead still when she saw him.

“Reach for your gun and I’ll fire before you can blink.” Titus snapped, holding tight enough onto Madi’s arm she was wincing and his knuckles were white.

“Let me go,” Madi tried but Titus kept his pistol dead set on Clarke, eyes snapping to Madi’s hot and burning.

“Shut up, you’ve done _enough_ ,” he snarled, with so much venom and unbridled hate even Madi recoiled in fear at the face of it.

Clarke wanted to kill him.

Her face must have said it, realised that Clarke cared far more for Madi’s life than her own, because her hand was only halfway snapping to the gun holstered at her side when Titus suddenly pressed the barrel into Madi’s temple.

“Titus,” Clarke hissed, and even if there was a brief flash of hesitation across his features, the mad fury remained and the gun didn’t move. Madi was trembling and _crying_ and Clarke raised her hands, backing a step. “Stop it, you’ve _won_ , alright? Put the fucking gun down.”

His jaw was clenched so tight she could see it straining in his neck, but his eyes flicked to Madi once before he sighed sharp through his nose and pulled the gun away, aiming it back on her.

But the damage had already been done. The threat was made and now Clarke knew exactly where his loyalties lied. Something cold slipped into heart and spread through her veins because it was a terrifying moment really, of the absolute clarity she felt. There had been one exact reason alone she had only _watched_ Titus and nothing else and that reason lied solely in the kid he held ironclad in his grip.

He’d rather her dead if it meant Clarke went too. Roan’s words echoed in her head and slowly, Clarke lowered her hands, staring and staring as the realisation dawned. No reason. No restraint. No chains.

But there was one thing left.

“Do you dream it, too?”

Her voice came out a whisper, the sheer weight of it too heavy to go any louder, but she knew the absolute second he heard. She saw him freeze, not frown, his throat bobbing.

Titus hesitated. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied, because it was obvious he had. His eyes flicked and he swallowed and Clarke had looked in the mirror enough times to know what a liar looked like.

And it wasn’t quite a confirmation, not really. Because you couldn’t learn something you already knew. Which she did, it was obvious in the worse way and so when she heard him say it the only thing she could do was _laugh_.

She’d felt it the second she had met him. When she’d walk out among the settlement, usually always keeping Madi in her periphery, she always had an eye on him too. Any time he caught her, his gaze meeting hers his hand _always_ twitched out to his side first, where a handgun sat lodged in his holster, and she could pretend all she wanted but she goddamn fucking knew.

Not entirely. Never entirely. But she knew she had _lost_ something, something intrinsic and the type of thing so settled and wrapped around your bones to rip it out was to tear and rip you apart too. And she had no answer _why_ , but looking at him always made her feel like it was the third of March.

Like everything that had ever dared to matter was dead, and what the hell was left to tie you down when it was all gone? If the world was already lighting up in flames what did it matter if she burned down a home too?

“She was the only thing that kept you alive.” Clarke muttered, and even if she deliberately shifted her eyes over to Madi and back, Titus seemed to take it in another meaning. Her soul rose high and fast right under her ribs like a snake coiling, and it felt like it had been waiting for decades and _decades_ for this, for this exact breath where the sky was still drowning and screaming while the settlement went down begging too and Titus stood there utterly alone in it all.

Clarke’s hand drifted slow and lethal to her side. She shook her head.

“You should never have threatened her.”

And with no love left to hold her back she opened fired.

-

His bullet hit her arm. But hers meant he had to abandon his grip on Madi, shoving her to the floor so he could grab onto the bar top with one hand and vault over it for cover. Clarke was already bursting forward, and before he could sling the rifle he always kept over his shoulder into his hands, she was snarling and leaping over the bar top too.

She punched him while the surprise still strangled him, and she’d only just raised her gun when he bared his teeth and his own arm snapped out, disarming her with a sharp jolt of pain at her elbow and lunging forward. She stumbled back and he followed it. His arm snapped out again but she kicked him _hard_ in the stomach and he fell back from the force.

She threw the weight of her bag off and it was _her_ eating up his space now, snatching the gun off the oak floorboards that’d dislodged from his hand and throwing it out the side. He recovered too quick and grabbed her before she could escape it, his eyes so close and _seething_ as he shoved her down back first onto the counter. He fisted the collar of the shirt, reaching for something at his waist but Clarke’s eyes frantically checked the sides of her and she stretched to grab the nearest thing.

It was an empty beer glass and she smashed it into his head. He swore but his grip loosed then just enough and she used the precious second to grab his arms, fist his jacket, pulling him forward and over the counter.

The momentum took her too and she fell with it. Her temple throbbed at the hit into the floor, painful and scolding, yet Clarke just grit her teeth and scrambled back to her feet, panting as she eyed Titus doing the exact same.

There was a moment where they stared at each other. The fact that neither of them had guns, were armed, had nothing but the fury in their fists and hate in their eyes. Her entire body was burning and thrumming with the adrenaline of it all, of the rage and the grief and of something that spanned back to a moment that took place over a century ago.

They came at each other like animals.

-

It was with a loud, furious roar of thunder that Clarke was thrown through a window.

The glass shattered and she hit wet ground. She was certain it was adrenaline alone keeping the throb pain of at bay that should have shook her body. Her nose was broken and bleeding, her arm still _ached_ where the bullet had grazed dangerously close to bone and she had no doubt one of ribs was bruised, if not broken.

Titus kicked the back door open. Clarke swore, the rain soaking her and making her feet slip as she scrambled back up. He came limping out, remnants of glass shards still lingering around his thigh from where she’d stabbed him with a broken beer bottle. Clarke backed away, spitting the wet hair out of her mouth and throwing it back over her shoulder.

“You should have been the one to die,” Titus snapped, an already nasty bruise swelling at his jaw, blood dripping down his lip and thigh and head. They were both nothing but broken pieces. His eyes flashed as he raised his fist and the sky snarled again. “It should have been _you_.”

Her body was slower with the pain but luckily Titus was too, and so she ended up dodging the blow— _barely—_ sidestepping and retailing with a strike of her own that hit him square in the eye. He took it with surprising ability but she went with it, pressing the advantage and channelling every one of those street fights she’d gotten into when she was younger—stupid and foolish and grief-stricken, her mother’s pleading doing nothing to stop her coming back bruised every night to a house too empty.

She got him to his knees with a hard enough hit to his already tender ribs, breathing heavily through gritted teeth as she brought her own knee up and into his face.

But it was obvious Titus was experienced in fighting too. He reeled back from the blow, but that feral burning she could feel in her blood she knew he was feeling too. When she went for him again he was expecting it and fended her efforts off, and it was in a painful blur that suddenly she was being _slammed_ into the ground and staring dazed up into the dark clouded sky.

Titus immediately sat on top of her. The rain was still pummelling down, his bald head almost shiny with it, water streaming down his face and running red past his lip and eye. She tried to bring her arms up to brace but he snatched her wrist with his hand and pinned it down at her side.

He hit her with his free fist. He only managed a few bruise-making blows until her own open hand surged up to catch his, gripping his wrist tight and snarling at him. She struggled beneath him and tried to move her hips to try dislodge him, but her arm was shaking violently from where it was holding on Titus’ own to keep him still.

She doubted she’d be able to hold it long.

“What is it?” she spat at him, as the throb in her ribs worsened, her arms already weak from the bullet wound and no doubt about to collapse any second. She knew where this was headed. She ignored the burning she could feel behind her eyes, the wetness that slipped out. “What did you do?”

His brow creased, just slightly. But Clarke was getting desperate now and knew she didn’t have long.

“Why?” she begged, because it _was_ begging, if only because this was the single thing she’d beg for. “Why do I hate you?”

The confusion passed into a fury so deep, so overwhelming and like acid for a breath he didn’t even look human. “You _killed_ her,” he snarled, his strength starting to overpower hers now, his coiled fist lowering from where Clarke was starting to fail to keep it away.

Clarke frowned, even as her heart started pounding faster and faster and her arm _throbbed_. It wouldn’t last a second longer. “Her?” she whispered, and it was then that her arm gave out and his hand was freed.

It instantly went to her neck. She renewed her efforts in attempting to throw him off, writhing and struggling but the fingers she tried to claw off her throat were immovable. “It was _your_ weapon and it was _your_ cause. You were destining her to be killed with what you were making her do.” He squeezed tighter and her lungs strained, burning in her chest as the darkness tried to crowd in on the edges of her vision. Titus’ lip curled in a sneer. “It was always _you_.”

She didn’t understand and somehow that was worse.

It was right on the verge where she thought it was over, weakening and fading to the point the world was nothing but a blur when suddenly Titus _yelled_ and was off her. Instantly she burst up too, gasping and coughing violently into the soaked earth, everything spinning so fast that she was convinced for a moment she was going to throw up.

But Titus was still a threat. She shoved aside the urge and snapped her gaze back to him, but almost as quickly did it shift the person standing over him, a bloody knife in her hands and eyes wide as she backed away.

“I…”

“Madi,” Clarke breathed, coughing again, but forcing herself onto her feet. She looked to the knife, then to Titus clutching his side, pale with shock and staring at her like he had no idea who she was.

The shock was soon melding into fury. He made a move as if to lunge at Madi but Clarke got to him first. He grunted at the pain of it, _screamed_ when Clarke deliberately dug her knee into the stab wound. His eyes jerked to hers, his nostrils flaring as he bared his teeth but Clarke could see nothing but red and the fist that smashed into his face wasn’t the last.

At first he tried to stop her but it proved useless. She kept going and _going_ until he didn’t have the strength to even defend himself anymore. When she screamed the sky did too, lightning flashing as the rain drowned them all in a violent cleanse. She saw nothing but those dreams of black blood and a blurred memory of _something_ ; of a building that stood taller than she’d anything ever seen, massive rooms with only countless candles as light and worst of all— _worst_ of all—bare and soft skin, trembling under hands and lips.

And it was only then that she finally realised what that feeling was in her dreams.

She only stopped when he was limp under her, her chest panting and shaking, and when she blinked the reality slowly swam back in front of her. Titus was still breathing, but it was weak and she could barely recognise his face anymore. She stayed sat on top of him as she stared. Her bloodied knuckles kept throbbing.

She knew what she wanted to do. But she glanced to Madi, standing looking terrified, and Clarke knew she couldn’t.

She got off him. Slowly pulled herself up to her feet. She kept staring at him, spat out the rainwater and blood in her mouth before forcing in a deep breath. She turned around and walked for the bar. She passed Madi without looking at her, even if she could feel Madi’s eyes boring into her, quick and hurried as she stepped back into the bar and immediately swept her gaze over the floor.

She found it easily. When she came back out with the gun in her hand Titus was still on the ground. For a moment she thought he was dead, but she neared him, saw the rise and fall of his chest. She didn’t think he’d last it for long. He was already weak and beaten, he’d bleed out soon enough from where Madi had stabbed him and then he’d rise once more; but dead and soulless and nothing human like he’d been.

Clarke didn’t believe he deserved the mercy of avoiding a fate like that. But she could still feel Madi in periphery, and she already knew what she had to do. Slowly, she moved towards him, stopping by his feet and clenching the gun hard enough it ached in her wet hands.

“Get up.”

His face was so battered now you could hardly see his features, but his confusion was obvious.

Clarke bared her teeth and stormed forward, roughly grabbed the front of his jacket and forced him up to his feet. She shoved him back as she let him go, but he was so weak he swayed and if it weren’t for him catching himself on a crop of wine barrels backed up behind him; he would have collapsed into the ground again.

He was still clutching his bleeding side. His eyes flicked up to meet hers, swollen yet still easily burning its hate. Clarke ground her teeth and kept watching him.

“Go inside Madi.” She muttered without taking her gaze off. Titus had the nerve to _smile_ at her then, even as it became so obvious between them he wouldn’t survive this.

“No audience this time?” he grinned, but it came out a wheeze and soon he was coughing violently. Droplets of blood splattered the dirt ground.

She dugs her nails so tight into her palm they almost bled. “Madi.” She snapped, glancing back at her now. Madi’s face was so blanched it was white and Clarke knew she’d never look at her the same again. Clarke blinked the heat in her eyes away and swallowed. “Go inside. Hide behind the counter. You only come back out if you fear for your life, do you understand?”

Madi glanced between her and Titus. Her mouth opened and closed, and Clarke felt her stomach _heave_ at just how obvious it was she was a child. She’d turned twelve a month ago but Clarke knew her innocence had died when the world did.

And whatever remaining shreds had no doubt been destroyed now too.

“Go.” Clarke whispered, and she saw Madi’s eyes tear up and spill as she slowly backed away. Clarke watched her to make sure, though she did throw a wary glance at Titus—there was little point though, he was still struggling to stand and seemed to be grappling to even just staying conscious.

She watched as Madi tried to say something again, but instead the tears came faster and she just walked back into the bar. She shut the door, though seemed to leave it open a crack just in case, and Clarke waited another minute or so until finally, she glanced back to Titus.

They stared at each other.

“If only she saw you now,” Titus said, his voice still raw with pain.

Clarke ignored him.

“Tell me what you dream.”

He frowned at her question. Clarke continued staring at him, unrelenting.

The rain kept pouring. There were less screams in the air, the gunshots not as common, and for a moment Clarke let herself wonder whose people were the ones surviving.

Clarke took a step forward and Titus straightened, attempting to back up but he was already pressed and leaning all his weight on the barrels. Nowhere to go. “Don’t fuck with me Titus.” She narrowed her eyes, and it seemed the absolute ice cold calm was far more terrifying than rage-filled snarls. “ _Tell me_.”

His throat bobbed. He pushed the silence another beat, but it was too obvious that he knew exactly what Clarke was asking. He couldn’t fake anything, not for this, and so as he stood here in the rain and storm still clutching on to his bleeding side, he pulled whatever remains he had left and stood taller.

He spat at her feet. “I dream of what could have _been_. She would have been legendary, what she could have _done_ if you hadn’t been there to ruin it all. It was _you_ who got her killed her and—”

“I killed her, did I?” she murmured, smiling, not looking at him as she neared closer and cocked the gun by snapping it back. He remained silent, and when she glanced up at him she saw his jaw was clenched shut. “No, I want to hear it. Tell me. What did I do?”

She paused then, and her soul fell quiet in her chest.

“Who was she?”

But Titus only seemed to grow angrier. He grunted as he pulled himself up, breathing fast and hard through his nose. “You want to know what I dream? I dream of everything you _never_ knew. I made her what she was and you destroyed it and instead made her _weak_.” He was almost frothing at the mouth now, even if his face was still so beaten it was unrecognisable. Her pace picked up until she was just in front of him, even as he continued snarling at her. “And what do you dream? Of all those that you murdered, of everyone you killed—”

The gunshot was so loud it felt like the entire world had heard it.

“I dream of _love_.” Clarke snarled, seething inches from his faces as his swollen eyes widened, blood spilling from his lips as he glanced to see the where she’d shot him in the stomach. In the spot she somehow knew would hurt more than just physically. “And you are so goddamn fucking lucky Madi knows you, because if I had it my way I would let you join the undead where you belong so that you can never know peace, so you can suffer for the rest of your pathetic fucking life at the verge of death.”

She stepped back. Titus collapsed to the ground, gasping and trying to clutch at his stomach. He stared up at her, stunned, but Clarke spat on the dirt in front of him and exposed her teeth.

“But trust me, Titus, if we ever meet again, there will not be a goddamn fucking thing on this earth that can save you. You will die begging and slow and death will be the only mercy you ever feel.”

Titus blinked rapidly at her, watching as she raised the gun again. “Wait,” he panted. “Wai—”

The second gunshot was swallowed by thunder.

-

Madi was waiting for her inside.

She wasn’t behind the bar counter, but crouched down next to the door, her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped tight around them. When Clarke pushed the door open and stepped in Madi immediately burst to her feet. Her eyes were red and puffy and it was obvious she’d probably been crying nonstop the second the door closed, her voice coming out a trembling whisper.

“Was he the one that killed your soul?”

Clarke stared at her.

Madi swallowed, taking a step back and looking smaller than she’d ever seen before. She glanced to the floor, screwing her eyes shut tight, and Clarke had to blink a few times to finally come back.

She looked briefly over her shoulder. “He’s not coming back.” She muttered quietly, and Madi looked up at her again. Clarke sighed. “I… he won’t be like them. The undead.”

She didn’t know if Madi looked relieved or not. Maybe she was both.

When the silence became too much Clarke moved. She holstered her pistol again, picked up her bag from where she’d thrown it off before and paused at the sight of Titus’ rifle on the floorboards. She stared at it a moment, hesitant, but slowly she came forward and picked that up too. She slung it over her shoulder. Felt the strap dig uncomfortably into skin at the unfamiliar weight.

The key was somewhere amidst a pile of shattered glass. When she bent down to snatch it—wincing at the tight twinge of her ribs—and stood back up, she glanced behind her to find Madi standing there, her arms wrapped tight around herself.

Clarke looked to the key in her hand.

“You’ve got a choice,” she started, slowly curling her hand into a fist and slipping the key back into her pocket. She looked at her. “You can stay here, or you can come with me.”

Madi stared at her.

“If you go with me, we’re never coming back. Not to here. I can’t guarantee your safety. Roan seems to have a soft spot for you, if he’s won, which he probably has, you could easily make home here.” Clarke threw a pointed glance to the door. “Your choice. I’ll support you for either one.”

Madi’s mouth opened and closed. She looked heartbreakingly small, but after a few minutes of heavy silence some of that fierceness came back, the one she always had. She looked up at her, almost defiant, and firmly nodded.

“I’ll go with you.”

Clarke thought she’d misheard. She stared at her, her mouth opening but no sound coming out. She… really hadn’t been expecting for that. The kid had literally just her watched her beat a man senseless and then kill him.

“You can’t go back on this,” Clarke warned, but Madi was starting to look like herself again and sighed in frustration.

“I know that. I want to go with you.”

“You know I killed him, right?”

Madi faltered at that. She looked small again, glancing over shoulder like she could see through the walls and to the corpse lying outside. “I know.” She said, quieter, slowly bringing her gaze back. “But… ever since it started, with the monsters, when…” she shook her head and let out a shaky breath. “You’re the only one who’s acted like you care. About me. Titus he never… I didn’t know him before. My mum never talked about him or family. I don’t think she liked him very much.” Madi shrugged. “I didn’t either.”

Clarke stared at her as the words sunk in. “You’re absolutely certain?” she asked, just one last time, and now Madi rolled her eyes.

“Yes, like I said before. I’m… I want to go with you.”

It didn’t seem like she could get talked out of it. Clarke nodded, tried to pretend like she definitely planned for this. Guess she had a kid now, though really it’d been like she’d had a kid for more than six months at this point. Her mother would have been finally feeling proud of her if she knew.

Clarke’s eyes scanned the wreckage of the bar. She moved towards it when she saw what she wanted, sucking in a sharp breath as she bent down to retrieve Titus’ pistol. Her ribs throbbed again. Definitely bruised.

She eyed the gun in her hands a moment before walking over to Madi. She held it out, holding the muzzle, and Madi’s eyes widened as her gaze kept jumping back and forth between the weapon and her. “But you said I shouldn’t use guns,” she breathed, actually sounding _excited_ and Clarke almost smiled.

She shrugged instead. “I need someone to watch my back. I’ll teach you how to use it when we’re… away from here.”

Madi sobered some, but she still took the gun giddily—if a little carefully—constantly looking at her like she was expecting Clarke to take it back any second. Clarke just shook her head, looked around until her gaze snagged on the door to the storage room near the back. Roan had said the tunnel was down there.

“You ready?” Clarke asked, but more than anything it was a final check. A last chance to back out if she wanted.

Madi was still handling the gun in her hands like it was made of gold, but she glanced up at her with a grin, nodding. “Ready.”

Clarke smiled a little too and reached out her arm.

This was the second time Madi held her hand.

-

They got far enough away she couldn’t hear the sounds of the settlement anymore, and only then did Clarke finally relax by an inch. They’d been walking nonstop for about an hour now. They hadn’t spoken a word since leaving, and Clarke kept glancing periodically at Madi to see if she was going to start crying again, to breakdown, but Madi trudged through the grass with her brow furrowed hard and staring at the ground. She didn’t know if Madi needed to grieve for Titus and the home she’d left, but she decided for now she’d leave her be and settle at her own pace.

Clarke knew she didn’t regret what she did. But she had expected to feel something for herself by now, when she thought of the way his body dropped dead and lifeless, she knew there should have been _something._ She didn’t know what particularly—peace, closure, maybe even a grief of her own—but there was nothing. She didn’t feel better, wasn’t sure if maybe it was worse, because now she had to live with the crawling weight on her shoulders of what she’d done.

Because it hadn’t really solved anything, had it? Her soul still ached and she still carried that loss. She hadn’t gained anything, only lost more.

But there _was_ one thing. Her. She knew it was a her. A _person_ , someone who she’d known somehow, who harboured a piece of her soul and took it with her when she was gone. It wasn’t much but it was _something_ and she had to take that. Whatever she could get.

The rain had stopped now. Her clothes still stuck damp and cold to her skin, and at seeing Madi shivering Clarke reached for the jacket she had kept in her bag, intending to be used herself, and gave it to her. It was a few sizes too big and acted more a waistcoat, but Madi clung onto it so tightly her knuckles were white and breathed out a relieved sigh. Clarke kept shivering, yet when Madi asked if she wanted it back, she only smiled softly and shook her head.

The sun came creeping out soon after, but Clarke felt no less cold.

And maybe blaming the sun for that wasn’t so fair.

-

For a year, there was nothing.

The summer came and abandoned. Autumn slipped in through the cracks of the stifling heat as it slowly leached away, and the trees sobbed off their dead leaves until by the end they were nothing but skeletal remnants. The winter was about as kind as the world was, and the dead centre of it was the worst. Their food got low and they were hungry more often than they were not. Usually anything they found she immediately gave to Madi and Clarke only ate if Madi had first, and while Madi protested the entire time, there was some things no amount of force could ever shake.

She managed to hunt down a pair of rabbits one night somewhere near the edge into spring. Foolish animals that hadn’t quite taken into account no matter how evolved and refined humans came to be; real, untamed desperation could make any man forget their own name. Their fire that night was pathetic in the cold, but those hours of watching the pitiful flames lick achingly slowly away at the skinned animal; that first bite into something _hot_ and juicy and filling made every goddamn second worth it.

Madi didn’t even insult her once that night. Instead, after, when they were for once full and content and lying on their backs, Madi turned her head from where they’d previously been looking up at the stars.

Clarke had been pointing out the constellations and murmuring the stories about each one. She was halfway through pointing out the Big Bear and lazily explaining the story of Zeus, of Hera’s jealously and everyone’s seemingly inability to remain chill, when Madi turned to her and asked, “Why don’t you ever tell people your name?”

Clarke blinked, but soon she was lowering her hand and sighing good-naturedly with a smile. “How come you always ask me these things when we’re watching the stars?”

“Because you’re more likely to answer.”

Clarke frowned. That was an annoyingly logical response.

“Come on, it’s my birthday. You have to answer.”

“Your birthday was two days ago. Congrats again, by the way. You’re officially a teenager.” Clarke turned her head and grinned at her. “You’re in for a _world_ of fun.”

“Does that mean you’ll stop calling me a kid?”

Clarke barked a laugh. “Madi, you’re thirteen. Use your head.”

That earned her a slap against her stomach. Clarke gave a melodramatic wince as if all the air had been knocked out of her from the blow, but Madi only shot her an unamused look and rolled her eyes. Clarke’s grin widened, and after a moment or two she glanced back up into the sky.

She didn’t know if it was entirely worth the end of the world, but staring up into the night sky devoid of light pollution, of naked stars free and streaking across the empty black sheet…

It certainly came close.

The smile slowly left Clarke’s face. The air shifted, time stretched and hesitated as if it was holding it breath like it knew the significance of what was to come. But time had never shown mercy on her, and she certainly wasn’t going to offer any in return.

“No one says it right.” Clarke whispered, and her words tripped as her throat tightened with something inescapable.

“What, like no one pronounces it right?” Madi asked, clearly confused.

Clarke felt a familiar ache deep in her chest. The smile that grew didn’t feel fit to be named a smile at all. “Not quite.” She murmured, quiet. “It’s just… when people say it, I just know it’s not right. Not in the way it matters.”

Madi’s brow furrowed. “You’re not making sense.” She grumbled. “Pronunciation _is_ how something is said. What else is there? Do you even know what’s the ‘right’ way then?”

“I don’t know.”

There was only a shy sliver of the moon tonight. Clarke wondered if there was anyone left up there, if there’d been some poor souls stuck in a space station watching over a world that had died without them. They would have probably run out of food and water by now, dead skeletons forever drifting where gravity was too shy to reach to. She wasn’t sure if that was a more merciful end or not.

She tore her gaze off and glanced to the side, saw Madi gazing up into the stars too, but she was frowning deeply with her mouth opening and closing like she was soundlessly arguing with herself.

Clarke bit her lip. Tried to figure out a way to explain something that never could. “You know when someone sings, and you can tell, even if you know jack shit about singing, you just _know_ when it’s out of tune? You don’t even have to know note they’re aiming for. You can know nothing at all about music, but you can hear it when the right note is not being hit.”

Madi’s frown fell away to a smirk. “Like your singing?”

Clarke scowled and swatted her arm. “No, smartass. My singing is wonderful. But do you get what I’m saying?”

Madi, at least, seemed to take it a little more seriously then. The moment lingered, and Clarke could almost see the gears in her head as Madi thought it over carefully. Eventually she nodded. “So… you’re saying you just need to like, find the right singer?”

Clarke’s smile softened into something more real. “Yeah. Just about.”

Madi fell asleep around an hour later. Clarke stayed awake though, keeping the pathetic fire going even if the heat it offered was pitiful at best. When she noticed Madi shivering Clarke shed off her own jacket and laid it over her. She added a few more precious logs to fire, if only so it was slightly less miserable, kept her gun ready and wrapped tight between her fingers in case any one or thing got too curious at the dim beacon of smoke and light.

The night spoke nothing, and so Clarke did the same.

-

It was the end of spring when they found him.

Clarke had always thought herself good with self-control. She was steady, usually, she rarely indulged and had learnt how to survive long before she learnt to live. But in face of the kid who had somehow been crawling further and further into her chest, far past the point of no return, that seemingly unshakable will was splintering.

They were in some suburban neighbourhood she wouldn’t have been caught dead in before the outbreak. Clarke was tense and she hated being anywhere so close to the undead, but they were low on supplies and food and if they wanted any chance of survival the risk had to be gambled with. It was a tactical knife clutched firmly in her hand this time, as it was imperative they make the least amount of sound possible, when Madi all of sudden gasped from beside her and in a blink wasn’t next to her anymore.

Clarke hissed her name as that little devil _bolted_ for she had no idea what. Madi leapt over a battered looking white-picket fence onto a green lawn, sprinted across the grass and when she met the ringed metal locked gate to the backyard, the kid just straight up dug her hands into the gaps and started hauling herself over.

Clarke was steps behind and was forced to climb it too. She kept yelling her name but that was an infuriating feat when she had to keep _quiet_ so it only came out as harsh whispers that were barely heard. By the time she _finally_ caught up with her, it was to Madi standing in the middle of a large backyard, frowning as she spun around and scanned her surroundings.

“What the _hell_ , Madi?” Clarke snapped, only remembering last minute that it probably wasn’t too appropriate to yell at a child _what the fuck are you doing?_

“I saw it,” Madi muttered, still frowning and looking around the yard. Clarke reminded herself to be sensible and not throw Madi over shoulder like a sack of potatoes and just goddamn drag her kicking and screaming.

Clarke stared at her a while before just giving up entirely. “Saw what?” she asked, throwing out a defeated arm. She looked around, but it was only an empty yard; there was a rusted abandoned swing set in the corner, a shed sitting on the opposite side against the fence and a doghouse with the paint faded and chipped.

But then she heard something. Movement, a huff and bump on weak wood. Madi was instantly moving again, stumbling over to the doghouse and dropping to her knees. Clarke hurried behind her, but dread was already clawing up her spine, and so by the time she was next to Madi again and she had the happiest smile she’d seen in a long while lit up her face, Clarke already knew.

Madi kept repeating small whispers of encouragements, and slowly, timidly, a thin-looking yellow Labrador that barely looked older than a few months came crawling out from the shadows of the doghouse. Madi’s smile was spreading further and further, and so when it came out enough, she was able to pet it, and the dog let her, tail wagging at finally finding non-monstrous company.

Madi looked up at her with that far too wide smile but Clarke was already shaking her head. “No, _no_. Don’t even bother. We’re not.”

Madi pouted. “But Clarke—”

“Have you even owned a dog before, Madi? You know you’ve gotta take care of them, right? You can’t just pass that duty off to me because you don’t feel like it. And, we are not even _scratching_ the surface of the fact that we are in the _literal_ apocalypse right now. We barely have enough food between us let alone a dog as well and—”

“ _Please_ Clarke, we can’t just leave him! What if he dies and starves or something?”

Clarke tried to frantically gesture at how insane she was sounding. She didn’t seem to succeed. “Exactly! We can’t care for it anyway! It’ll probably starve no matter what, do you _seriously_ want to watch it happen?”

The dog licked Madi’s hand. Madi glared at her and wrapped a protective around its trembling body. “I can take care of him. We’re _not_ just going to leave an animal to die when we could help it.”

Clarke scoffed. “We’re not keeping him.” She muttered, and she narrowed her eyes in warning at her. “And that’s final Madi.”

-

They kept the dog and Clarke named it Fish out of spite.

-

It was surreal being back in the city again.

The city was the last place she wanted to be, but Madi had gotten sick and they’d been in desperate need of medication. At the start it’d been nothing, and while Clarke had worried she hadn’t _worried_ —but then she’d gotten a fever, gotten lightheaded and weak and Clarke had had to hide the fact she was terrified so Madi didn’t see.

She had avoided the undead since the beginning. People at least made sense in some way, even if there’d be times more than once she’d found animals with more humanity than some, but the undead, they weren’t right. A given, obviously, but in strangest way it felt _familiar_ somehow. To watch them swarm and tear at people alive with their teeth and nails. She could never shake off the feeling she’d seen this before. It was incredibly unsettling.

And so she wasn’t quite sure on just what exactly would make you turn. The one constant she’d discovered was no matter how you died, you became one of them, and she’d heard stories of someone getting bitten in a group and either immediately getting banished or put down like sick dogs.

But beyond that, she didn’t know. Madi hadn’t been bitten or scratched by one of them, yet how could she possibly know the extent of just what it took to get infected?

She’d been scared shitless. If the time ever came, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to do it. The tension eventually snapped and so Clarke went back into the place she’d sworn to never return. It was mostly to do with wanting to keep as _far_ from the undead as possible, but also because of a worse reason. Of that old grief and ache in her heart that meant she only dared to look at passing corpses in a glance at most.

If she saw him, she didn’t know what she’d do.

“You really don’t talk much, do you?”

Clarke sighed sharply through her nose. She begrudgingly glanced up from where she’d been sharpening her knife and looked to the owner of the voice.

He initially had what was probably meant to be a flirty grin on his face, leaning into the wall with one elbow up. His smile soon dropped at the dead silence, his eyes flicking to the _very_ real weapon in her hands and of all a sudden taking a stumbled step back.

“I mean, not that it’s _bad_ or anything, like I didn’t mean offend it’s just—a comment! An observation! Nothing bad or—or malicious about it I swear I was— _pleasedon’tcutmewithyourknife_ —”

“Stop.”

His jaw snapped shut mid-ramble. It was so sudden Clarke wondered if she told him to jump if he would. That’d be a little cruel though, so she refrained.

“Look,” she started, and she set the knife down on the shelf next to her, ran a hand through her hair. It was shorter now and she’d still not quite adjusted to it. “I appreciate what you’ve done for Madi, Jasper.”

He lit up some at that. “Well, I didn’t do much. Only opened a few locked doors.” He waved off, did that leaning thing again and tried for another charming grin.

Clarke stared at him. “Exactly.”

“Oh. Uh, right. Sure.” He awkwardly cleared his throat and pulled himself up. Clarke just watched with disinterest and picked up her knife again. It’d been dull with its constant use, and though it upped the risk in being forced to getting up close and personal, it meant she didn’t have to use a gun. Sometimes you took what you could get.

When she glanced at him and saw him still awkwardly shuffling there like a kicked puppy, she ground her teeth and only barely bit back the urge to sigh. Jasper, from what she’d gathered, was just about the same age as her and yet in the week he’d been tagging along with them she was beginning to feel like a mother of two.

Madi was better now, though. She’d recovered and it _had_ been because when they’d snuck into the city, he’d been the one they discovered with a key into a pharmacy that, miraculously, hadn’t yet to be fully ransacked. The past week since he had been trailing along with them.

He’d tried awkwardly flirting before and gotten nothing but annoyed silence in response. Clarke was beginning to question whether he really was just a complete idiot, oblivious, or the most likely option, Madi was convincing him behind her back that he _definitely_ had a chance.

The kid gained far too much enjoyment in her discomfort.

“Fine. There is something you can do for me Jasper that I’d… appreciate.”

As expected, his eyes brightened and he excitedly gestured out. “Of course! Anything! Well, not _anything_ anything, like anything within reason. I mean, I know it might be difficult to tell at first glance but I’m not the most, _athletically_ apt so to speak and—”

“Jasper.” Clarke snapped, and his face flushed as he gave a nervous laugh, mimed zipping his lips. She could feel a headache coming along. “You brought us to this comic store. Go help Madi find what she wants.”

It’d been a mostly new thing, learning Madi’s interest in them. A part of Clarke wondered if it was something that’d only caught her fancy before or after the world fell in on itself. Either way, the chances of them ever coming back to the city were slim to none, and Jasper had mentioned a comic book store that sat more on the outskirts and could happen to pass on if they adjusted their exit route a little.

It made her nervous, staying longer, but Madi had smiled so excitedly and tugged incessant on her sleeve so what was she meant to do?

Jasper’s eyes widened. “Right! Sure, of course! I’ll uh, I’ll—I’ll get the best one! I know my way around so, you don’t have to worry! Not a bit!”

“Stop talking.”

“Yes! Sorry, I’m just—yes. Right. I’m on it.” He paused though, seemed to try and rally himself. “Any chance I might… get your name now?”

There was a loud cackling laugh from within aisles of comics. Jasper’s head whipped around, but Clarke just rolled her eyes like always. It’d be a cold day in hell before Madi stopped being an instigating little shit.

“Go help her before I change my mind.”

He must have heard the hardening in her voice, because seconds later and he was fleeing.

A nose bumped into her shin. She looked down and saw Fish staring hopefully up at her. He was bigger now, just about a year old, and though he’d been more than a handful at points he had been getting better. Madi loved to repeatedly remind her of this, usually followed by a pointed glare of _see? Aren’t you glad you listened to me?_

She smiled though. “Hey boy,” she murmured and she reached down a hand to stroke his head. It’d been a pain initially to train him, but she had come to grow fond of him, especially as he now acted as a sort of unofficial early warning system for undead.

Fish excitedly wagged his tail and licked her hand. He sat down next to her on his haunches, and she kept a hand absently scratching his head as she checked over her knife once more.

She also could have sworn she heard Jasper whisper, “okay, seems to like dogs, so there goes robot theory,” under his breath.

Clarke let it be. Soon Jasper started talking with Madi and she let their voices drown out, smiling softly out the corner of the mouth when Jasper made a suggestion of some sort, and not a second later there was a distinctive _thwack_ of what was no doubt Madi hitting Jasper with a comic book. She let herself get distracted with it, watching them while shaking her head, and so she missed it when Fish went quiet.

-

It all happened in seconds. It always does.

The gunshot rang through the city like a bell toll, followed by a terrified, desperate scream. Clarke’s head whipped around, the smile instantly slipping off and pushing her face against the glass of the front store. It wasn’t long after she saw movement down at the far end of the street. A woman came stumbling out from around the corner, wailing and limping from looked like a bleeding wound at her leg.

She was too far to tell whether it was a bite or not, but then right with her a whole group of snarling, groaning undead came around the corner too, and the answer didn’t matter anymore. The woman raised the gun in her hand, uselessly stumbling back as the wave of them staggered closer.

The first gunshot had been enough though. Sure enough, Clarke saw movement right up ahead, and her eyes snapped towards to where more undead now spilled out of the alleyway directly across from them. Drawn in by the sounds.

Her blood ran so cold it was dizzying.

“Out,” Clarke breathed, taking a shaking step back as Fish started whining incessantly next to her, nervously backing up and getting closer to Madi. “Out, _out_ , out the fucking back _move_.”

Jasper rushed forward and pushed his face into glass like Clarke had. Clarke roughly pushed past him and snatched Madi’s hand and dragged her with her without even waiting. Madi knew though, had spent enough time surviving with nothing but each other that she abandoned the comics wordlessly and followed on hurried feet.

“Oh god there’s—fuck, there’s so _many_ ,” Jasper whispered, and Clarke kicked the back door open. She checked it was clear before ushering Madi through, Fish with her, but when she glanced back Jasper was still standing there staring out.

“Are you coming or not?” Clarke snapped, and even if Jasper flinched he nodded shakily, stumbling away and towards her. Clarke pushed him through the door when he wasn’t quick enough, drawing the hunting knife into her hand and following after.

Another gunshot went off, this one closer than before, and the resulting frenzied cheer of monstrous snarls made the hairs prickle up her neck.

And it felt inevitable in worst kind of way when more things kept going wrong. The back way they took was only lonely for barely a street until a pack of them flooded in. Clarke’s hand jerked out and snatched the back of Madi’s shirt just in time, ripped her backwards and out the range of the rotting snapping teeth.

“Run!” Clarke hissed at her, kicking the closest square in the chest before taking off with them behind her.

The alleyway that should have been clear was blocked and they were forced to funnel out onto the main street. This was worse and _open_ but there was no other place to go. They sprinted down the sidewalk, long dead backed up cars all stacked in a mechanical graveyard next to them. Jasper kept cursing again and again under his breath as they ran and she wanted to tell to shut the fuck up and just _move_ but there was no point.

She turned a sharp corner only to pull a frantic stop. There was an entire goddamn _swarm_ of them there, huddled and feasting on something on the ground. There were more spilling in from the sides, and some even came crawling over turned over cars to get to the carcass of something that sat out in the middle of the street.

It took just one to notice her. She tried to back up immediately, but one caught the movement and jerked around, met her dead in the eyes.

It _snarled_. Like a chain-reaction, all the rest of them spun around too, blood and gore spread across their teeth and face, some even missing their entire bottom jaw and seeming to just shove the scavenged meat down their throats with its hands.

“Oh god,” Jasper whispered horrified from behind her.

“Keep fucking moving!” Clarke snarled instead, almost tripping over her feet as she hastily backed up. The undead all came staggering forward and Clarke prayed it wasn’t the last thing she’d ever see. Madi was with her at heels and even _Fish_ seemed to understand just how fucking dire was, that the plan of quietly sneak in and out was going to be next to impossible.

They were in an intersection and Clarke went the way that didn’t have undead streaming out of it. It turned out only one way offered that, and when they all split off down the _hopefully_ safe street the answer as to why soon became apparent.

It looked like a manmade barricade of cars. A long, toppled over supply truck was flat on its side, covering almost the entire length of the street. Either side, at where the gaps would have been, makeshift walls were shoved in, metal sheeting circled in rusted barbed wire and _far_ too thick to break through without time.

Clarke looked to the truck and the undead behind them and realised there was no other choice.

She was panting fast and hard in her lungs when she got close enough to it. It was _big_ and way over her head even on its side, but the second Clarke was near enough she jumped and latched on to it. Her foot got a grip on one of the back tires, and she grit her teeth as she wrapped her hands around the piping under the truck and climbed up.

More panicked shouting went off behind her, primarily from Jasper. Clarke dug her fingers into the ridges of the top wheel and _heaved_. Her grip slipped and she probably would have fallen right off if she hadn’t of got a firm enough kick to the underbelly, gave the momentum needed to scramble up top.

She didn’t waste a second. Immediately she dropped to her knees near the edge and shoved her hand out.

“Jump Madi,” Clarke panted, and Madi ran and leapt towards her without question.

Clarke caught her arm. She grunted, pulled her up as quick she could, the moment she was close enough tangling her other hand into the back of Madi’s shirt to pull faster. Relief flooded her once Madi was up, but when she reached down for Jasper he ignored her, instead nodded encouragingly to himself and wrapped his arms around Fish’s body.

Fish panicked, but Madi shouted out for him to calm down and somehow, it worked.

“Here! Take your dog and I’ll—I’ll climb up!”

“There’s no time,” Clarke hissed, her eyes snapping up to the army of undead so close to swallowing them now. Jesus, there were so _many_. “Just fucking take my hand and—”

“Here!” Jasper grunted, pressing his back into the truck belly and holding a panicking Fish in his arms. He sucked in a sharp breath and adjusted his arms so he could just hold below his hind legs and prop him up.

“Jump!” Madi shouted, but Fish whined and barked in his fear, and he only finally obeyed when Madi snapped it out for the third time. Clarke watched the undead coming closer and slung the rifle off her back. She checked the clip, her heart tripping over at realising it was her last one—yet she only swallowed the terror down and readied the chamber.

Fish jumped and Madi caught him just in time. With her helping he managed to scramble up on top with them. Madi cheered, even Jasper grinning in relief, but Clarke aimed down the sight and fired a shot off at the closest undead that had lurched out for him.

They were barely twenty metres off.

Jasper scrambled to climb up like Clarke had but it was taking too long. Clarke frantically put the gun into Madi’s hands and hurried over to where Jasper was below and offered out her arm.

“Grab me!”

Jasper did. He did the same blind jump she did, and she caught his wrist just before he could slip. He was heavier than Madi, she grunted again and grabbed him with her other hand too, so she could pull with all her weight.

It almost worked, except Jasper's face contorted into scream right below her and he was ripped out her hold.

The undead had caught up. She tried to jerk forward to reach for him but it was too late, he was already being dragged into the ground by hundreds of hands, and the last thing she saw was the desperate glint of his eyes before he got swallowed into the mass.

“No,” Madi whispered, and it was that word alone that snapped Clarke out of it. She blinked, ignored the urge she had to throw up and scrambled up onto feet. She checked over behind her, but there were barely any undead up the street ahead—at least any obvious—and they could jump down to that car that was backed up right below them.

“Down Fish,” Clarke ordered and she pointed to the path she’d eyed. He hesitated and shuffled back and forth at the edge of the truck, Jasper just screaming and screaming and _screaming_ , until all it once it was cut off into a gurgled sputter. “Down!”

He jumped. The car shook but Fish landed fine, and Clarke spun around, expecting Madi to be ready next to her but she wasn’t. She was still crouched by the edge of the truck, staring down at where Jasper was. She looked dead pale and on the verge of passing out.

“Madi,” Clarke tried, but when that got nothing she grabbed Madi’s arm and pulled her back. “Madi I’m sorry, I'm so sorry but we have to keep moving.”

“He was right there,” Madi breathed, staring off into nothing even as Clarke tried to pull her back. She blinked, tears spilling out onto her cheeks as she slowly brought her gaze to Clarke’s. “ _He was right there_.”

“Madi baby listen to me, I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_ but we can’t stop, there’s no time for this. You can grieve at any point in your life but you can only die _once_.”

“How could you not care?” Madi snarled at her.

“I care about _you_.” Clarke snarled right back. It was a cold, cold mindset to only rarely get attached, but she’d survived too long that the instinct came too easy. “But I am not fucking mourning two people today, do you understand? Just jump down and follow me and don’t _ever_ stop running.”

The truck shook. Clarke caught Madi before she could fall, but she knew it wouldn’t be minutes later and the undead would be overtaking them. Madi still had tears in her eyes and she was so _young_ and not at all meant to know something like this, but after blinking furiously and clenching her fists she nodded stiffly.

They got down. Taking off at a dead sprint and feeling her heart pound worse and worse with each passing second. They weren’t in the centre of the city—they would have died quick in that case—but they were still _in_ the city and dangerously far out from making it. Clarke tried stopping every now and again to check for cars, motorbikes, fucking _anything_ but it was all long dead, either broken down or empty or wedged too deep in a sea of cars.

So when they were running down a side street and Clarke head an engine rumble—a serious, honest-to-god _engine_ —she practically skidded to a stop and snatched onto the back of Madi’s shirt. Her head whipped around, and at hearing shouting, very much _human_ and alive shouting, she hesitated and listened to it.

It was two men it sounded like, and they were loud and panicked enough she figured they’d be gone by the time they found them, except mid argument a single word was yelled between them that made everything stop.

“If we don’t leave right fucking now we’ll never make it back to Polis in time!”

 _Polis_.

Polis was safe. She didn’t how or why she knew that, perhaps more so _believed_ that with such experienced finality, but she did. It itched at the something right in the recess of her mind, a convoluted knot that though the word _tugged_ at it—still it always failed to unravel.

It was enough though.

And acting on an instinct she didn’t even know she possessed she took off with Madi and Fish behind her. They leapt over a long dead, decaying corpse lying out in the middle of an alley, shot clean in the head, and ran in. At the end it forked off into two ways. The engine snarling and shouting was coming from the left.

They didn’t see her immediately. Clarke turned the corner to see an actual _army truck_ there, though the canvas was ripped and bloodied over extended use. There was a young blond boy sitting up in it, hunched into himself and looking terrified, while two equally big and bearded men argued just outside of it.

Clarke ran. They saw, all three heads whipping towards her. One of the bearded men yelled something to other, and the other split off to the back of vehicle as the first one burst forward. There was a chain-link fence with an open gate that stood between them, and the bearded man managed to slam it closed right as Clarke made the distance and lunged for it.

“We’re not taking anyone,” the man snapped out, ignoring when Clarke bared her teeth and tried to shove the fence in frustration. “ _Keep running_.”

“Please, you have to seen how many there are, there’s no way—”

“Not my problem.” The man cut off, but he looked about as scared as her, and despite the threat to his voice there was something almost like pity in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said again, softer this time. “But you need to keep moving.”

Clarke’s eyes flicked between his. He clenched his jaw, stepped away and ignored her when she begged for him to open the gate.

“Get ready we’re moving, Ryder!” he yelled, and he got a confirming shout back.

“In already Gustus or we’ll join the rest of them!”

Gustus nodded and stepped up into the back of the truck. Clarke saw how he immediately went to sit next to the young boy, put a gentle hand on his shoulder as he yelled out another command to Ryder, but this one in a language she didn’t recognise.

Clarke listened to the faint snarls and groans she could still hear, and realised that even if only one of them made it out, it was better than nothing.

She closed her eyes and cursed under her breath.

“I have a kid!”

Gustus’ eyes jerked to hers. The truck was already starting to move but Clarke reached behind for Madi, brought her forward so she was obviously holding onto the fence in desperation too.

“Please,” Clarke breathed, staring him right in the eyes. “Just get her to safety, I’m begging you.”

Gustus jumped out. The truck stopped, Ryder shouting in confusion, but Gustus ignored him and came storming forward. His eyes were hard and burning, stepping right up until they were almost nose-to-nose, the fence the only thing giving them space.

He stared at her. Clarke didn’t back down, and slowly his eyes shifted over to Madi.

“Our people are burdened enough as it is.” Gustus said, his voice completely unforgiving and cold. “We don’t need more mouths to feed, we don’t need more people to care for, because we _can’t_ afford it.”

“You’ll willingly walk away and let a child die?”

Gustus shoved the fence. Clarke didn’t flinch. “I don’t know you,” he snarled, utterly furious now. “I care for _my_ people, and taking on two strangers who—”

“I’m not saying both of us, I’m saying the child.”

Gustus paused then. He frowned, but Madi’s gaze snapped up to Clarke’s. Clarke didn’t look at her, knowing she was doomed if she did.

“Just get her out safe, please, I can’t—” Clarke cursed under her breath and uselessly shook the fence. “She can’t die, she’s barely thirteen. Please.”

Gustus stared at her. It was different now though, he was considering it and she’d never been so desperate before in her life.

“You can’t, Clarke,” Madi said, roughly pulling on her sleeve until she was forced to finally look to her. Madi looked betrayed. “You—you _can’t_. We can make it! We always do we can—we can get out, we _can_.”

Clarke looked back to Gustus. “Please,” she whispered one last time, and slowly, Gustus’ massive shoulders fell and nodded.

“ _Only_ the child,” he warned, but Clarke was too overwhelmed in relief and just nodded frantically. Ryder yelled something impatient again, and Gustus eyed her with that distrusting gaze as he carefully reached for the fence gate and pushed it open.

“Come on,” Clarke urged, and tried to usher Madi through but Madi was stubborn, ripped her arm out of Clarke’s hands and glared up at her with exposed teeth.

“You are _not_ shipping me off in the nearest getaway vehicle. You’re not leaving me, you always say we’re a team that we—that we do this together and—and we don’t—”

But Madi’s words got lost into a sob, and Clarke was sure this was a moment she’d never deserve forgiveness for. Instead of saying anything she pulled Madi into a crushing hug, and though Madi resisted at first the effort was half-hearted and abandoned quick.

“I’m so sorry,” Clarke whispered into her ear, and she closed her eyes and buried her face into Madi’s shoulder. She breathed deep there and tried to memorise the scent right down into even the most stubborn parts of her brain. “But I need you safe more than anything.”

“The comics we got weren’t even good,” Madi sobbed, and Clarke let out a wet laugh even as she leant back out, pressed a shaking kiss to Madi’s forehead and brushed her thumb across her cheek.

“I love you.” She murmured, but Madi shoved her hand away.

“You’re _not_ saying goodbye, I’m not leaving.”

“There’s no time left.” Gustus warned. Clarke glanced to him, saw he was already back into the truck again. They wouldn’t wait any longer.

Clarke looked back to Madi again. “Madi,” she said slowly, and with care, she unwound her father’s watch that she’d kept on wrist years before the outbreak. She put the watch in Madi’s hands. Madi stared at her like she’d never seen her before. “The longer you delay this, the less time you give me to run.”

It was cruel, but it worked. Madi blinked at her, shook her head as more tears spilled out, but she moved this time, slowly started for the truck. Gustus gently offered his hand out at seeing her approach, yet Madi stopped just as she was about to reach him.

“Take Fish,” she rushed out, her eyes widening, and Clarke glanced down to the aforementioned dog that was sitting behind her. Clarke opened her mouth to protest, but no sound came out. “Please,” Madi added. “He can make sure no one sneaks up on you.”

Clarke doubted that. She wanted Fish with Madi, so she had _something_ , but she’d already denied Madi too much and she knew this was a fight not worth it.

“Okay.”

Madi nodded in relief. Gustus helped her up, but the second she was in she moved to the opposite seat of them, still staring out at Clarke.

Gustus met Clarke’s gaze and offered her a nod. “If you survive, go north. There’s an old mill that sits along the river. You go there and you tell whoever you find _Gustos don sen ai_.”

Clarke nodded too. Gustus clenched his jaw, only held her eyes another second before he slapped the side of the truck and yelled out for Ryder to move. The truck instantly jolted further—Ryder had been shouting every now and again progressively more panicked—and Clarke stood there until they disappeared completely around a corner.

Madi never stopped looking out at her.

-

How she escaped was more miracle then anything.

It had been a long while since she’d ran like this, that if-you’re-not-fast-enough-you’re- _dead_ run, till she was panting erratically and every pull of breath tasted like blood. Even Fish was breathing too hard, kept pace with her and barked and growled whenever the undead scrambling after them got too close.

She knew the city though. Hadn’t grown in it, but she’d lived. Had spent hours sitting on park benches staring out and sketching anyone foolish enough to stand still for too long; knew the old yet vibrant woman, the one that always passed by her, almost routine, at the same time that Clarke went to get the coffee every morning that _didn’t_ cost her entire life savings and her grandchildren’s too.

She knew it enough. Ended up sprinting into an alley and scrambling up the metal chain-link fence she’d expected to be there. Fish barked frantically at her, and it took him leaping up on a nearby lidded bin as undead lurched in from around the corner, her desperate gesturing and the greatest display of trust she’d ever seen when he just _jumped_.

She fell to the ground as his body tumbled into her arms. It grazed badly against her elbows, but she sat lying there stunned with a dog in her hands, looking up to see undead now with their faces against the fence, digging bloodied and decaying teeth into gaps as they tried to reach through.

She laughed a little manically in adrenaline-fueled disbelief, pressed a hurried kiss to Fish’s head and went off running again.

It reminded her of what it was like in the gap she had no one. After Wells and before Madi. The two years in-between, with the world dead and cold and her heart colder. And despite the _very_ uniqueness of that situation, it still felt like she’d done it all before, to be alone and isolated and burning with useless fury.

Clarke just barely jerked her shoulder away when an undead lunged for her from nowhere, dull eyes and pale, shrivelled skin bursting out the dark. She stumbled out onto an open street, this one lacking undead as all it hosted was a midway abandoned construction site for flats on the left and parkland on the right.

The undead kept chasing after her. It snarled like a demon and honestly Clarke thought it was the closest they’d get to one above ground, and she spent too long checking over her shoulder only to crash into something solid.

Panic immediately jolted through her, but she shoved the body on top of her, scrambling for her knife at her side _ready_ to kill it when the body let out a very much alive groan.

Their eyes met each other’s. He looked to be in his twenties, had barely anything to him apart from ripped jeans and a once white shirt now splattered in dirt and blood and sweat. Fish was barking furiously in warning of the undead still stumbling after them, but their sights both dropped to Clarke’s bag that’d gotten dislodged in the fall.

It sat between them.

“Don’t.” Clarke warned, reading the desperation across his face.

Warnings didn’t mean anything in a world like this.

He frantically shoved himself up and dove for the backpack. She went for it too, but the undead was closer to her and she could only rip it back and forth in a useless tug-of-war before she saw it flash from the corner of her eye. She ducked and abandoned her hold on the bag, let it fly from her hands and instead snapped her elbows out to shove the creature’s neck.

It pushed her onto the cold tarmac with it on top of her. There was the loud _clang_ of ripping metal, a chorus of victorious, skin-scrawling snarls from further back, and she kept its snapping teeth just out of range of her neck as leant her head back to see more of them come streaming out the alleyway into the street.

Fish whined and barked even more loud and terrified than before.

“Yeah, I fucking know!” she hissed, daring to pull an arm away so she could reach to her side. The snapping teeth got closer and rotten blood and saliva hit her face. “But I’m not fucking dying here.”

She ripped the knife out its holster and jammed straight through the undead’s ear.

Heaving the now limp festering body off her she got up, saw the man hadn’t gotten too far, had had to fend off an undead too. He kicked the thing so violently into its weak chest there was a _crunch_ and its ribcage caved in, slammed into the ground with bones and gore splattering out.

Clarke split after him. It wasn’t long until she was bodily tackling him to the ground. The air got knocked out her lungs and there was a pained grunt below her, but she only roughly shoved him onto his back and ripped the bag from him. He didn’t immediately lurch out to grab it, just let her take it, and she was confused even as she scrambled up and _ran_.

The answer was soon revealed in the gunshot that cracked the air.

It was _loud_ and her right leg instantly crumpled as blinding pain rocketed through it. She cursed and spat, rolled onto her back and went to reach for her own gun but his was already now aimed on her head, his face twisted into a snarl almost as animal as the undead running behind him.

He pulled the trigger just as Fish leapt out and snared his jaws around the man’s wrist.

The shot went wayside and while the bullet hit fucking _terrifyingly_ close—it hit the ground, not her, the man was distracted with trying to the throw rabid dog off him and she tore the gun from her _un_ -injured thigh and shot him clean in the shoulder. His body jerked back and he hit the ground.

“Here Fish!” she yelled, and Fish ripped his teeth out the man’s wrist and bolted for her. The man clutched at his bleeding shoulder, but he hadn’t even gotten to his knees before the undead behind finally caught up.

Clarke ripped her gaze away at the first sound of screams. Fish scrambled to next to her as she tried moving again, had to grit her teeth at the shock of pain with each step. Guns. Why was it always fucking guns?

“Good boy,” she panted when he caught up, throwing her bag onto her back again and only able to offer a hurried ruffle of his head as praise. She dared to cast just one glance back, saw undead all swarming on the man to the point she couldn’t see him anymore. There was just the snarls and the screams and the reminder nothing was worth it to turn your back.

She ignored the nausea in her gut and ran.

In all her lives, it was all she ever seemed to do.

-

“Don’t tell Madi,” Clarke told Fish, night now long fallen and sitting in a ransacked house with only a handful of candles as light.

He eyed her in an entirely judging way as she brought the cigarette to her lips and pulled deep.

It burned and exhaled her lungs. She tilted her head back and tried to ignore the stubborn pained throb from her thigh, where it stung and ached from under the bloodied bandage. She’d always hoped she’d never have to use the medical kit she had scavenged a while back, but that had been a daydream right from the start.

Fish took one sniff and got up from where he was laying next to her, instead went over and lied down only once he was on the other side of the living room.

She glared at him. “ _You_ suture your own damn wound shut and try and act all mighty.”

Fish turned his head away from her like the traitor he was.

She held the cigarette delicately between her lips while she grabbed her rucksack next to her. She unzipped it open, reached in and pulled out the prized object inside. It was smooth and light in her hands and she couldn’t help but smile, as she carefully flipped the comic book open. When they had first found the comic store, Madi had just gone in, scooped a handful off the floor and shoved them into Clarke’s arms.

Madi had thought they were going in and out, and they probably would have but her heart was her heart. It might not have been soft—not after everything—but played right, and it became something close. It made her wonder what Wells would think of that.

She fell asleep watching the candle flame flicker, feeling like she was missing the joke.

-

Days later, following north, she found the mill.

The beaten down car she’d found in the city outskirts died quick. It had got her out, and that wasn’t anything to treat lightly, but it wasn’t long till not even divine intervention could shove life back into it. She’d spent the day being forced to walk, slow and careful and wincing every other step.

She had to take far more breaks than she was comfortable with. And it only really hit her as sat down on a big enough rock, stretched her leg out and rolled down her pants to redress the wound, of just how alone she was. Of how _scared_ she was.

It used to be it only felt like this on the third. That sensation that it was like two minds sharing one body. It had been rash and impulsively dangerous to just hand Madi off to the nearest getaway vehicle, and she wanted to hate herself for it but she couldn’t.

Because it was almost like Titus, except in the opposite. She’d heard _polis_ and that was it. It wasn’t hate this time, but something so much worse and softer. Like watching sunrise when you never wanted the night to end.

If she found Madi hurt though, she’d never trust her soul again.

Clarke slowed as she approached the watermill. It looked more an art piece than actual functional machinery with purpose. More a historical site, probably. A nod to the past that we all pretended we lived. The river that ran next to it was weaker now, and the repeated _clunks_ and creaks of the old aged wood was somehow both soothing and unnerving simultaneously.

There was a small shack-like house pressed right against it. Clarke eyed the windows, but they were all boarded from the inside with wood. A good and bad sign. It had been used, so fair chance it _was_ the one Gustus meant, but it also meant going in blind.

Clarke looked down to Fish and gently grabbed his blue bandanna he had as a collar. Madi had made it, and Clarke had been too charmed to scold her from stealing and cutting up one of Clarke’s own shirts for the material.

“Stay close to me,” she murmured, was pretty sure he didn’t understand one bit, so she held on the bandanna tighter and tugged him right against her leg. He tried walking off with his nose to the ground when she moved forward, but with a frustrated sigh and pulling him back, a hand now hanging close to his neck, he seemed to listen.

She approached the door from the side. Instead of going in front, she carefully pressed her back against the wall of the house and reached sideways to knock on the door.

Nothing.

Clarke grabbed the neck of Fish’s bandanna and held him back as she edged forward. She tested the doorknob, surprised it was unlocked, and pushed it open with her hand while she immediately pulled back into the wall again.

The shotgun blast made Clarke grateful she was paranoid to the core.

Fish barked and reared up onto its hinds, Clarke only just able to hold him back so he didn’t do anything stupid. She grit her teeth, _finally_ able to calm him down in time for someone to yell out from within the house, soon followed by the rough cocking of a gun chamber.

“This place is taken, you can fuck right off or the next shot’s going in your head!”

Clarke sighed through her nose. “I was _told_ to come here.”

“And _I’m_ telling you to fuck off.”

Clarke hit the back of her head against the wall. The hell was that thing Gustus told her to say? It hadn’t been English, or even any obviously recognisable language. It took a tense minute, in which Clarke was pretty sure she was probably about to get shot again, until it finally hit her.

“ _Gustos don sen ai_.”

Silence this time. Clarke frowned slightly. Somehow, the language felt familiar on her tongue and rolled far too easily.

“ _Gustos don tel yu op?_ ” the voice called back, but it was lacking the fire now. Curious but cautious.

“ _Sha_ ,” Clarke replied without thinking. And before she could even unpack how the _hell_ she just did that the door was being kicked open from inside. She jerked back, her gun already in her hands and primed, but the woman who came out had the shotgun now slung onto her back.

“You’re the one with the kid, aren’t you?”

Clarke slowly put her gun down. She kept it in her hand though, eyed the woman who clearly had more than one weapon on her. She looked surprisingly healthy and fit, someone who if Clarke had met in different circumstances, would probably have run from. She looked the type to drag you with her down to hell even if it ended in her demise too.

Clarke nodded slowly.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “If you’re lying to me, I’ll slit your throat and watch you choke on your blood.”

“How many blondes are there with a dog looking for a kid?”

The woman said nothing. Something lessened in her shoulders though, and while the scowl didn’t leave on an even sharper face, she seemed less likely to kill her. Hopefully. Maybe. The jury was still out.

Clarke clenched her jaw. “Take me to where she is.”

The woman arched a brow at the demand. Her eyes scanned her up and down, lingered around the thigh Clarke was avoiding her weight on. She nodded at it. “What’s with your leg?”

“Got shot when I was left for dead. I can walk.”

“Doubtful,” the woman replied, and she was smirking now. Clarke wasn’t sure whether it was an improvement or not. “Lucky for you, I’ve got a car.”

Clarke tried to not let show her relief, but it must have been too obvious on her face because the woman’s smirk turned knowing, and she gestured out dramatically behind her.

It was hidden under a tarp out back. Unlike Clarke’s abandoned one; this didn’t look like it was running on empty fumes. The jeep was clearly cared for, that though scratched and dented at points, could rev to life easy. It even had what looked like handcrafted modifications on it, of jagged spikes built into the bumper. They were covered in dried blood.

The woman must have seen her both impressed and horrified expression.

“My girlfriend’s idea,” she explained, and it was honestly a little terrifying how proud she sounded. “Not mine.”

Clarke raised her brow but said nothing. She walked—and _definitely_ didn’t limp—to the car door, but the woman seemed to mistake her silence for something else, and suddenly there was a bruising hand grabbing on her arm.

She resisted the urge to take her knife out. Instead slowly brought her gaze to her, stared her right in the eyes.

The woman didn’t look intimidated. “You haven’t got a problem with that, do you?” she muttered low, but it was so unexpected and not at _all_ like the fight Clarke was convinced was coming she actually cracked a smile.

“It’d be very hypocritical of me if I was.”

That slow, terrifying smirk grew again. The tight grip on Clarke’s arm left, and instead the hand came out in introduction. “Knew it. What do I call you, then?”

Clarke’s eyes flicked up and down between the offered hand. She waited a moment, before cautiously reaching out to shake it. She wasn’t getting anywhere without at least _some_ attempted cooperation. “Griffin.”

“Anya,” the woman gave back.

Something quiet breathed in her soul, but she only nodded and got in the car.

-

They drove so long she almost fell asleep.

She probably would have, as trudging on for days with a gunshot wound would exhaust any functioning person, but there wasn’t an ounce of trust in her bones for the stranger sitting next to her so she fought against it. They had been in the woods for a while now, and the shadows were long and stretched, crawling eager across the forest floor while the sky sighed deep.

Fish had his head flat on the armrest centre console. Unlike her, he was happily dozing, content and peaceful with Clarke’s fingers idly running back and forth between his ears. Anya only glanced once when the dog head had appeared out of nowhere from behind. He’d gotten bored with lying in the backseat.

“He’s young, isn’t he?” Anya had commented, and Clarke tore her gaze off from the car window.

She looked to Fish who now had stuck his head between them, grinning with his tongue out and sniffing Anya’s shirt. “About a year.”

“You bred dogs or something?”

“Found,” Clarke corrected, figuring she’d be better off _not_ pissing off the person who had control of the moving vehicle. “We’ve had him for…” and she frowned a little, tried to work the maths in her head. It’d been so long since March, and that was her main point of reference for the date. “Six months probably?”

Anya nodded without looking at her, watching the road.

Clarke had waited for another question but nothing else came. Fish soon got bored and settled down once more, found his position where he’d sleep the rest of the journey. Clarke tried to wonder what the point of conversation had been and only ended up running in circles.

They rolled to a slow stop on the dirt road, halting just before a fallen tree log. It was _big_ , like the rest of the trees around them. The nagging exhaustion shed off quick when the wave of sudden anxiety hit. She leant forward, trying to see through fading light, but it was only dense woods.

“We’re here?” Clarke asked, accepting she wasn’t going to find anything. She glanced to Anya and was surprised to find her face like stone now. There was something cold and sharp in her eyes, and Clarke fought off the reflexive urge to reach for a weapon. Without breaking her stare, Anya’s hand shifted out and locked the car doors.

“I will give you one chance, right now, to tell me if you’re lying and walk away.” Anya murmured, and the low voice was deceiving. It was soft but utterly brutal. “Because if I find that you’ve lied to me, I will leave you begging for death. Do you understand?”

Clarke stared at her. “Is Madi safe?”

Anya’s brow twitched, but otherwise her expression remained unchanged. “Of course.”

“Good. Because if I find _you_ have lied, I will do the same.”

Anya watched her for a long while. Clarke was halfway through wondering who could draw first, what injuries she could risk if it meant taking her down, when without warning Anya nodded stiffly and unlocked the doors.

“We walk, then.” Anya said, shoving the car door open and stepping out.

Clarke was starting to get the feeling Anya just started and ended conversations where she saw fit.

They didn’t walk for too long, thankfully. Fish kept getting curious and drifting out, following his nose at the new smells and Clarke let him be, for the most part. She called for him whenever he disappeared for too long and sure enough, he’d come running on back.

It took just the first time that Anya stopped walking completely.

Clarke’s hand immediately snapped to holster, thinking she’d seen something but Anya grabbed her wrist, seeming to expect it. “Hold on, just—hold on a second,” Anya said, cutting in before Clarke could protest. “Did—did you _seriously_ name that fucking dog _Fish_?”

And before this all happened, she probably would have been embarrassed. But when you’ve seen people torn to shreds with nothing but blunt nails and teeth, killed so many that if she ever felt enough pride to mark it, it wouldn’t even fit her back, then—well, your perspective on what matters tends to skew.

So Clarke just shrugged. “It’s funny.”

Fish, naturally, chose then to come running back. They both looked to him, and at the combined attention his tail started wagging and he eagerly shuffled forward. He shoved his nose into Clarke’s hand until she was forced to pat him.

Anya was looking at her like she was genuinely starting to question her sanity, yet eventually she just caved with a bewildered shake of the head and moved on.

The signs of a settlement started revealing itself once the air had started to chill, footprints and crushed twigs in the dirt as the blue above melded into purple, tall shadows constantly swallowing them up in their path as they trekked. Clarke grit her teeth, trying to hide the pulse of incessant pain every step took, especially the longer they pushed, but Anya saw and slowed down some for her.

“I'm fine.” Clarke pushed through clenched teeth, and Anya just arched a brow but kept the slow pace anyway.

The settlement appeared minutes later. It was big, far bigger than she expected, a wide stretched show of spiked vertical logs as walls. It looked like it’d been done by hand, and the sight felt so unexplainably familiar. The nerves churned heavier in her gut. This looked protected. If things went south, the odds were _far_ from her favour.

They came to a heavy-duty door round the side, this one thick and metal, and Anya shot her one last warning glance before reaching for a battered looking small key and slipping it in. Clarke stiffened when she heard distant shouting from inside.

Anya didn’t seem near as concerned. She pushed the door open, having to give a shove with her shoulder when it resisted, and instead of going in, like Clarke expected, Anya stepped back.

“Give me your weapons.” Anya ordered, because it very much was one. The cold glare she got in response of her hesitation being proof enough. “How about this. You’ve got two choices. You either give me your weapons, and go in, or I can shoot you through the head right now and save us the time.”

Clarke ground her teeth. She waited it out another painfully tense beat, but her need to find Madi overran her discomfort. And anyway, she could hold her own weaponless. Mostly. There’d probably have to be some _severe_ adjustment in the escape plan, but she could adapt.

“You steal anything, and I’ll know,” Clarke warned, reluctantly handing the handgun at her side, then the rifle slung over her back, the hunting knife at her thigh and, after a flat look, rolled her eyes and shucked her backpack off too.

Anya took it all, slung the rifle with her shotgun and threw the bag onto her own back. Clarke clenched her jaw so hard it hurt, and strangely she felt more naked than anything without the weight of the gear on her. She wanted to snatch it back just on the fact of familiar comfort alone.

Anya gestured with the commandeered pistol to the door. “Ladies first.” She muttered, and with her free hand she also gently grabbed the back of Fish’s bandanna. “And your dog is staying near me. Now move.”

In an act of survival, she bit her tongue and said nothing as she carefully moved forward. In her head though, she let herself curse her out, because she might be practical but she was also human.

After ducking through and ignoring Anya’s violent presence behind her she let herself examine where she was once she was in, and it wasn’t seconds later her eyes were widening and she understood, at least, why Anya had been so cautious and threatening. What with the type of haven they had hidden here, yeah, you’d guard something like that with your life. Set up sentry by heaven’s gates and cock the chamber.

It reminded her of Tondc. But these row of makeshift houses and shacks looked sturdier—loved, had care and intelligent effort sewn into the foundations. It was hard to make out in the gradually falling dark, only really able to see out onto the middle street, but either side stretched out what looked like a _village_ almost. But far smaller and without the populace.

Clarke squinted, saw a hundred or so metres up where there was a group of people all crowded around. The source of the shouting, evidently, and as she gingerly came forward with Anya at her back, her heart kept pounding relentless in her chest as every possible outcome spanned out before her. This was either about to go  _very_ badly and most likely bloodily, or the universe was actually going to show kindness for once.

The closer they got, the more she made out the voices.

“...No, no, no _fuck_ you,” a very familiar voice shouted out, absolutely furious and sharply shoving her finger into a giant of a man’s chest. “Seriously, fuck you and your stupid ass beard and your _stupid_ teddy bear complex or _whatever_ the fuck you think—”

“Did you hear that? She told _Gustus_ to fuck off! Gustus!” another voice cut in, utterly delighted like she’d never seen anything better. “Can we adopt her? Seriously?”

“Raven,” a third, _extremely_ tired voice reprimanded that made Clarke think this was not the first time. “Please don’t encourage—”

“All of you can go fuck yourselves, can you stop talking about me like I’m not right goddamn here?”

Clarke was grinning wide now though. She watched as the bear of a man, _Gustus_ she now realised, tried to come forward to Madi with raised hands to probably try and defuse the situation, but Madi was Madi. You tell a demon to calm down and they’ll only see an opening and nothing less.

Expectantly, Gustus wasn’t even midway through his attempted peace talk before Madi _spat_ at the dirt near his feet and glared right up at the six foot five giant above her. The crowd, which Clarke was close enough now to see was around five or six people, almost all collectively widened their eyes and gaped. The almost being the excited one, Raven presumably, who genuinely looked like she’d never been happier.

“ _Fuck_ you, you absolute—”

“Hey little devil!” Clarke called out, and in an instant all heads snapped towards her. She was pretty sure Anya even raised her gun, ready for anything, but the second Madi’s head snapped around the furious snarl on her was dropped in a heartbeat.

Madi _beamed_ and took off in a dead sprint. Clarke tried to get out some warning of her very much still injured leg but the next second Madi was leaping into air and crashing into her arms. It was bad and _shit_ did it hurt but she ignored it, stumbled back and held Madi so desperately tight in overwhelming relief.

She was fine. She was _fine_.

Madi was laughing in joyful disbelief into her ear and it was a sound she’d never forget.

“You came back,” Madi breathed, still not at all in the process of letting go.

Clarke closed her eyes and blew out a stuttered breath, cradled the back of Madi’s head as she held tighter. “Always,” she whispered, ignoring how her voice cracked and a wet laugh broke out. “Always for you.”

She wasn’t sure how long it was until she finally released her and pulled back. Madi came up a bit below her shoulder now, and it was terrifying to think how much she’d grown when she’d been nothing but a spitfire on her back trying to kill her.

Clarke brushed her thumb across Madi cheek and went to hug her again, but this time she went close to her ear and whispered, “if they’ve hurt you, hold my hand.”

But Madi jerked back with wide eyes, hurriedly shaking her head. “No, no, they’ve been nice. I’ve even had soup! They have a garden like Vera!” she gushed, and Clarke frowned as she brushed the hair out of Madi’s eyes.

“You just told Gustus to go fuck himself.”

“That was different,” Madi waved off. Clarke raised a brow as she finally pulled herself up from where she’d been leaning.

“What did you do, Madi.”

Madi scowled. “Nothing! I’m being accused!”

Clarke stared at her in a way that had taken a long, long while to perfect. Madi glared right back her, defiant and immovable until the silence became too stifling. As the seconds pushed on Madi grew more and more uncomfortable till finally, she sighed with her whole body and rolled her eyes up into the sky.

“Okay, _fine_ , so I might have taken something I wasn’t meant to. But in my defence, it was chocolate. I had no choice.”

Clarke had to hide her victorious smile. Demons can easily manipulate and work with words, but with silence, they’ve got nothing to fight but themselves. “You’re a little devil,” Clarke said with total affection, and her monster of a child shoved her in the chest in retaliation.

It would’ve been fine, but she stumbled back right onto her injured leg.

A white-flash of pain shocked her system, her knee instantly buckling under her weight, and yet what she expected to eat a face full of dirt was instead a hand catching her elbow and holding her up. Clarke staggered, but that was all. She was utterly bewildered, and her eyes snapped to her side to find who’d caught her, and it was just one look and it was over.

Clarke stared and stared and _stared_ while her soul downright _lurched_ so violently beneath her skin it hurt.

“You must be the one Gustus spoke of,” the woman said, and Clarke recognised it as the tired one from before but also something entirely different. She helped Clarke up so was standing fine again, but Clarke was unable to say anything and didn’t know why. The woman, brunette, seemed to let the most likely creepy staring slide off. “Are you alright?”

She knew that voice. How did she know that voice?

Madi punched her in the arm when Clarke just kept staring like a moron. It finally broke her out of it at least, even if she winced and rubbed her arm while glaring at Madi. Madi just rolled her eyes.

“This is Lexa,” Madi introduced, exasperatingly gesturing out to her. “She’s the boss here. I think.”

“Lexa,” Clarke repeated, just to taste the sound, and she was sure her soul stopped moving entirely.

Lexa dipped her head in acknowledgement, her hands held loosely behind her back. “Gustus was not… too optimist in your return.” She admitted, only a little cautious. Her eyes flicked to Madi briefly. “But I am relieved to find you have.”

Her heart was hammering desperate in her ears but somehow, she managed to nod like the entire universe wasn’t collapsing in on itself. “I tend to survive.” Clarke muttered.

The corner of Lexa’s lip twitched, but she seemed to resist the smile. “You’re clearly injured, and I know you’ve travelled far. I can see you’re tired. You may rest the night, if you’d wish it. We can talk properly in the morning.”

Clarke hesitated—more reflex than anything, at this point—but Madi tugged on her sleeve at seeing it, kept urging her till Madi could get in her line of sight and did that cheating thing of sad and resigned eyes.

Such fucking cheating.

“Please, they have chocolate,” Madi breathed, her voice going reverent and soft at the end. Clarke looked between them, to Madi’s open pleading and Lexa standing there with her eyes soft.

Madi had never needed to beg.

Clarke nodded and Madi lit up immediately, stepped back and pumped her fists. It was then she seemed to remember her other sorely missed companion, and right as her eyes snapped open in realisation Clarke was already onto her chain of thought and pointed to where Anya was still lingered a couple metres off behind them. Since there wasn’t a bullet in her head, she’d apparently decided Clarke hadn’t been lying.

Madi’s head whipped around, saw Fish and excitedly yelled his name before taking off for him. Anya seemed to see her coming though, seemingly deciding she _didn’t_ want the monster child near her and just let Fish go, the dog immediately splitting her the moment it was free. Madi barely got a metre in before Fish bounded over and crashed into her.

Clarke smiled and shook her head. She brought her gaze back to Lexa and felt her heart stumble in her chest at seeing Lexa smiling just slightly too. When their met sights again, Lexa appeared to realise and quickly wiped the expression off. Failing to realise the remains of it still lingered in her eyes.

Clarke almost couldn’t breathe.

“We have a empty bed you may stay tonight, and if you’d wish we can move Madi’s in with you.”

She nodded, still distracted in something she didn’t understand, but Lexa didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m not sure I caught your name,” Lexa said, taking a step forward and inclining her head in a tilt. Clarke caught the sight of Madi do that same knowing smirk in the corner of her eye, but before she could no doubt cut in with a sarcastic comment Clarke was answering without hesitation.

“It’s Clarke.”

Madi’s eyes blew wide and she tripped over her own foot as she tried standing up too quick.

Lexa’s lips twitched up again. “Clarke, then,” she spoke softly, speaking her name without too much thought but Clarke’s soul _ached_ like it had never lived before and was finally taking its first breath and oh.

 _Oh_.

So that was how it was meant sound.

“Well,” Lexa said, and she offered this small smile that for some reason had Clarke suddenly fighting off the urge to cry. “You’re welcome to stay the night.”

And Clarke knew without a shred of doubt she was home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> me, sobbing: they’re just fucking soulmates  
> target employee: ma’am,
> 
> translations:  
> Gustos don sen ai - gustus sent me  
> Gustos don tel yu op? - gustus told you?  
> Sha - yes


End file.
